Fear Appeal in Traffic Safety Advertising: The moderating role of medium context, trait anxiety, and differences between drivers and non-drivers

Abstract

The impact was investigated of the intensity of a fear appeal, the valence of the medium context, and the individuals' trait anxiety and personal relevance on the responses of 197 individuals to anti-speeding advertisements. A high level of fear attracts more attention. A negative valence context leads to a more positive anti-speeding attitude. The most important moderating effect of trait anxiety is that the attitude is more positive when low-anxiety individuals are exposed to high fear appeals in a context with negative valence than in a positive context. These results were largely replicated for drivers, but not for nondrivers for whom there was only an attention-getting effect of high fear appeal. Theoretical and practical implications for anti-speeding campaigning are discussed.Previous research on the responses to (various levels of) fear appeal are inconclusive. This may be due to potentially important moderating factors that have not been taken into account. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of high and low levels of fear appeal on the attention to an anti-speeding message and the attitude toward speeding, and to study the moderating role of positive and negative medium context, trait anxiety, and personal relevance.Witte (1994, p. 114) defined a fear appeal as "… a persuasive message that attempts to arouse the emotion fear by depicting a personally relevant and significant threat and then follows this description of the threat by outlining recommendations presented as feasible and effective in deterring the threat." Fear appeal can be weak or strong. A key element in the effectiveness of fear appeal is the type of processing that takes place. Two processes are commonly mentioned, i.e., a fear control process (maladaptive behaviour or message rejection) and a danger control process (adaptive behaviour or

Fear, threat and efficacy in threat appeals: Message involvement as a key mediator to message acceptance

“…This study did not explicitly focus upon possible interaction effects between message and context factors and evoked fear and cognitive appraisal effects. Nevertheless, they may be meaningful (see, for instance, Janssens and De Pelsmacker, 2007). The effect of the threat level of the context on evoked fear, threat, occurrence or efficacy may, for instance, be only visible at high or low levels of message threat, as found in this study.…”

“…This has been attributed to affective priming and excitation transfer (Kamins et al, 1991;Tavassoli et al, 1995;Yi, 1990). For instance, Faseur and Geuens (2006) found that for positive emotions the most effective ads are those that are shown in contexts evoking the same specific emotions as the ad, and Janssens and De Pelsmacker (2007) also found that the context was relevant for the responses to threat appeals.…”

“…Most studies have confined themselves to manipulating the level of fear, but context variables, such as emotional or thematic (in)congruency (see, e.g., Janssens and De Pelsmacker, 2007) may have an effect on the responses to threat appeals as well. One of the least studied aspects of threat appeals is the question which message and context elements lead to higher or lower levels of perceived threat, efficacy and evoked fear (Hastings and Stead, 2004;Witte, 1998).…”

Riskli Sürücü Davranışlarının Transteorik Model Temelinde İncelenmesi: Bir Grup Karşılaştırması Çalışması

“…Diğer bir deyişle bu fark henüz sürücü koltuğuna oturmamış ve sürücü olmanın içsel ve dışsal dinamikleriyle tanışmamış olmalarından dolayı olabilir. Bunu doğrular nitelikteki bir başka çalışmada hız sınırlarına uymakla ilgili bir reklam kampanyasının sürücüler ve sürücü olmayanlar üzerine etkisini inceleyen bir araştırmada sürücüler ile sürücü olmayanların odaklandıkları noktaların farklı noktalar olduğu; sürücü olmayanların sürüşle ilgisi olmayan kısımlara daha çok odaklandığı bulunmuştur (Janssens ve De Pelsmacker, 2007). Bu nedenle belki de sürücü olmayan kişiler, hız yapmanın nedeni olarak gösterilen sebepleri değerlendirmektense kendileriyle ilgili başka bilgileri (örn; trafik harici ortamlardaki davranışları) değerlendirmeye almaktadır ve trafiğe çıktıklarında kurallara uyacakları yönünde olumlu beyanda bulunmaktadır.…”

Cyber security fear appeals

“…This suggests that pre-existing practices, and presumably prior decisions to smoke or refrain from smoking, led people either to accept or reject the message. Leventhal [97] review a number of studies showing that vulnerable people (e.g., smokers) were less amenable to fear appeals than invulnerable people [80,85,99].…”