Using Fear Appeal in Green-PC Advertising Fenghueih Huarng Jan-hui Liao Bao-lin Lin Department of Business Administration, Southern Taiwan University of Technology

Motivation Fear appeal are mostly used in public health Fear appeal + action frame (Rothman and Salovey 1997; Rothman et al 1999) It seems unethical ： fear appeal followed by product frame => scare audience before promoting a commercial product framing product followed by scary information => to investigate presentation order effect

Literature and Hypotheses Involvement=>H1 Message framing & involvement=>H2 Presentation order & involvement=>H3 Self vs. environment references=>H4

Involvement Robertson et al (1984)showed 1.AD and information content attract more in high involvement. 2.High involvement actively collect more product and brand information. 3.High involvement reject contradicted information, low involvement passively accept contradicted information. H1 ： High involving consumers has better AD attitude and PI than low involving consumers.

Message framing and involvement loss frame good for detection of health problem gain frame good for prevention behaviors (Rothman & Salovey 1997; Rothman et al 1999) Based on persuasion literature(Chaiken 1980 ； Petty & Cacioppo 1983), Maheswaran & Meyers- Levy(1990): LI=>simple inference=>positive frame HI=>detailed processing=>negative frame H2 ： Under high involvement, negative frame is more persuasive ； under low involvement, positive frame is more persuasive.

Presentation Order and involvement Two contradictory messages ． Haugtvedt and Wegener(1994) － attitude strength & ELM High relevant => high elaboration=> primacy effect Low relevant => low elaboration=> recency effect Different presentation order for same message ． Unnava et al (1994) － under memory-based judgments order is unimportant with print message =>no or low processing info has no presentation order effect ． Buda and Zhang(2000) － low personal relevant product primacy effect for non-expert recency effect for expert H3 ： high involvement show primacy effect on final attitude ； low involvement show recency or no order effect on final attitude.

References ： self vs. environment Bower & Gilligan(1979),Burnkrant & Unnava(1995),Greenwald & Pratkanis(1984),kuiper & Rogers(1979),Roger et al (1977): self-reference has more elaboration than other-reference Keller and Block(1996)show interaction between reference and fear for smoking AD ‥ Under imagery processing, high-fear is more persuasive for other-reference (too much fear arousal inhibit elaborating) ‥ Under objective processing, high-fear is more persuasive than low-fear, other-reference is more persuasive than self-reference Self-reference emphasize cancers caused by radiation =>high-fear (but not too high) & higher and direct efficacy Environment-reference emphasize environmental destroys caused by ozonosphere damage =>low-fear & lower and indirect efficacy H4 ﹕ Self-reference has greater persuasion than environment- reference has greater persuasion than environment-reference

Extraneous variables Boster & Mongeau(1984) ： fear appeal are more effective for elder audience Palam(2001) ： review ninety academic reseavch papers about gender identity in consumer behavior Geller(2003) ： other affecting factors- threat component, action component, framing, recipient volunteers, audience’s anxiety, perceived response cost, etc This study only include gender and age as control variables

Method (1) Green-PC is a familiar product and not low involving Dep. Vars (Likert scale) ︰ AD cognition (6 items), AD affect (6 items), PI (7 items) Independent variables (controlled) ‥ Order ︰ fear appeal first vs. product first ‥ Framing ： positive product frame vs. negative frame ‥ reference ： self vs. environment *self ： radiation lead to fatal diseases *environment ： ozonosphere damage lead to harmness on human, animal, plants & the earth Moderate vars (Likert scale) ︰ product involvement (CIP:16 items) & environment cognition (NEP:12 items)

Method (2) Control ︰ gender (nominal), age (ratio) 746 undergraduate students(1)look over a PPT AD (2) fill up questionnaire (3) receive a small gift (4) debriefed with our thanks.

Results(1) measurement reliabilities are all greater than 0.7 (Table1) Samples are clustered into two groups: low vs. high involving (Using CIP & NEP) =>two groups are significant different (Table2) Main effect(Table3-1)

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3-1 main effect & control vars

Results(2) Interaction effect (Table3-2) Control variables ‥ gender is significant on AD cognition (+) & PI (+) ‥ age is negatively related to AD cognition (r= , p = 0.007) =>younger has better AD cognition Female > Male

Table 3-2 Interaction effects

Results(3) Order*Involvement Interaction=> support H3 ANOVA P=0.079P=0.483P=0.058 p=.001p=.000 p=.031p=.018p=.363 p=.000

Results(4) order * frame interaction ANOVA P=0.071 P=0.006P=0.005 p=0.245 p=0.003 p=0.200 p=0.000p=0.015p=0.000

Discussions & Conclusions(1) Our experiment support H1 & H4 as expected ** high-inv has greater AD attitude & PI than low-inv ** self-reference has greater persuasion than environment-reference H3 is supported. high-involving, primacy effect (PDF) for all dep. vars low-involving, primacy effect (PDF) on AD attitude no order effect on PI ** low-inv consumer has low elaboration => primacy effect on AD attitude, but hard to change PI ** Product-first seems more persuasive than Fear-first

Discussions & Conclusions(2) Frame and involvement interaction is not significant in ANOVA. All six means > 3 (p 3 (p<0.001) & two means <3 (p=0.019 & 0.008) for low-involving  low-involving are quite high-involving by considering mean scores  negative frame is more effective  partially support H2

Discussions & Conclusions(3) ANOVA show order*frame interaction Buda & Zhang (2000) & Buda (2003) show no 2- way interaction (order*frame) Stereo fear appeal (FF) literature 1.gain-frame is better for health prevention; loss- frame is better for early detection (Rothman et al, 1999). 2.no frame effect for prevention; negative frame is better for detection (Block & Keller 1995) Buying green-PC is preventive, no frame effect on AD cognition & PI; positive frame for AD affect => consistent to FF health literature

Discussions & Conclusions(4) Product first (PDF) take fear appeal as a facilitator to explain the risk. PDF has all six means (CIP & NEP) > 3 FF has five means > 3 (sign mean = 3) FF > PDF in NEP (p=0.013), PDF > FF in sign (p=0.013) For PDF, negative frame good for high-inv => consistent to product AD literature FF cause more fear arousal => inhibit elaboration PDF cause less fear => more elaboration

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