Compliance with mass marketing solicitation: The role of verbatim and gist processing

Abstract

Introduction: Mass marketing scams threaten financial and personal well-being.Grounded in fuzzy-trace theory, we examined whether verbatim and gist-based risk processing predicts susceptibility to scams and whether such processing can be altered. Methods:Seven hundred and one participants read a solicitation letter online and indicated willingness to call an "activation number" to claim an alleged $500,000 sweepstakes prize. Participants focused on the solicitation's verbatim details (hypothesized to increase risk-taking) or its broad gist (hypothesized to decrease risk-taking).Results: As expected, measures of verbatim-based processing positively predicted contact intentions, whereas measures of gist-based processing negatively predicted contact intentions. Contrary to hypotheses, experimental conditions did not influence intentions (43% across conditions). Contact intentions were associated with perceptions of low risk, high benefit, and the offer's apparent genuineness, as well as selfreported decision regret, subjective vulnerability to scams, and prior experience falling for scams.Conclusions: Overall, message perceptions and prior susceptibility, rather than experimental manipulations, mattered in predicting scam susceptibility.

Susceptibility to COVID-19 Scams: The Roles of Age, Individual Difference Measures, and Scam-Related Perceptions

“…Participants self-reported whether they had ever fallen victim to financial fraud ( Nolte et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Solicitation measures were partially adapted from Wood et al (2018) and Nolte et al (2021) and otherwise generated for the purpose of the present study. Cronbach’s αs based on the present sample are reported under “Data Reduction Strategy” in the section “Results.”…”