Humor is widely used in persuasion in both advertising and education. Funny ads are more likely to be enjoyable and involving, and therefore memorable, than others. However, some researchers point out that humor in advertising is risky. It can be devastatingly effective. It can raise ethical issues. It was noted that little research has been paid to the subject of consumers' ethical judgment of a humorous advertising in social marketing. The purpose of this article is to better understand the effects of perception of the ethicality of humorous advertising on persuasion and behavioral intention. A conceptual model is proposed and tested. A sample of 390 smokers was retained to test the model. In order to test the hypotheses, we adopt an exploratory approach with SPSS 20. The structural equation model was utilized using AMOS 20 software. The results show that the perceived ethicality of humorous campaigns is necessary to improve its effectiveness. This study provides a framework and guidance for the development of public health communication campaigns relying on effective and ethical humor.

The Literature agrees that fear appeals are effective to attract attention and create motivation to quit smoking. However, theses threatening messages can easily raise ethical issues. This article outlines some ethical issues about the use of fear appeals. Also, it tries to understand the effect of perceived self-efficacy of smokers on the ethical judgment of scary advertising. The experimental study that we have conducted reveals that fear appeals are perceived ethical if smokers feel able to implement the recommendation of the message sender. Both the theoretical contributions managerial implications of such a result will be discussed in this paper.