Improving the effectiveness of prosocial advertising campaigns: Message strategies to increase support from less empathic individuals

Abstract

Individuals with low levels of trait empathy are hesitant when it comes to helping people in need. This makes it difficult for nonprofit organizations to gain their support for prosocial advertising campaigns. An experimental study among 214 Swiss students examines what message strategies nonprofit organizations should use to increase support from less empathic people. We investigate the effects of depicting daily life situations where people in need are happy versus sad (visual message strategies) and the effects of presenting statistical versus anecdotal evidence (verbal message strategies). The results show that less empathic individuals hold more favorable attitudes toward prosocial advertising campaigns when exposed to sad daily life images and anecdotal evidence. Moreover, attitudes mediate message effects on less empathic individuals' intentions to comply with a prosocial advocacy. Overall, the study suggests that nonprofit organizations should prefer sad over happy daily life images and anecdotal over statistical evidence in prosocial advertising campaigns.

Campaigning Zakat on Social Media: The Role of Message Strategies in the Decision to Pay Zakat

“…With regard to zakat, some many verses and hadiths can be put forward to support this frightening message. In addition, Bünzli (2022) stated that non-profit organizations should prefer sad images to happy daily lives and anecdotal messages over statistical evidence in prosocial advertising campaigns.…”

Expressing Demands or Offers: How to Promote Volunteering Using Visual and Verbal Appeals

“…In line with this assumption, previous studies found that positive prior attitudes toward a nonprofit organization increase donation intentions (Lwin & Phau, 2014; Song & Kim, 2020). Although speculative, the greater baseline support of people with positive prior attitudes may affect the magnitude of the effects measured (Bünzli, 2022). When people are already favorably inclined toward an advocacy, variations in message strategies may produce relatively smaller effects (i.e., smaller effect sizes).…”

Predicting user loyalty and repeat intention to donate towards fantasy sports gaming platforms: A large‐sample study based on a model integrating philanthropic actions, well‐being and flow experience

“…In the current study, the proposed conceptual framework established philanthropic actions as the most crucial factor predicting user loyalty, followed by WB and FE. This influence loyalty and donation intentions on gaming platforms, which need to be empirically investigated in future studies (Bünzli, 2022;van Teunenbroek & Hasanefendic, 2023). Besides, this study is crosssectional and the future research may adopt a longitudinal sample study, which may provide better insights on how to select/engage with fantasy sports gaming platforms.…”

“…Future studies could undertake empirical investigation in different contexts, such as social gaming platforms or other popular Indian gaming platforms such as poker, puzzle, adventure, arcade and racing. Numerous other factors (familiarity, trust, message appeals/strategies, prosocial tendencies, and social value orientation) influence loyalty and donation intentions on gaming platforms, which need to be empirically investigated in future studies (Bünzli, 2022; van Teunenbroek & Hasanefendic, 2023). Besides, this study is cross‐sectional and the future research may adopt a longitudinal sample study, which may provide better insights on how to select/engage with fantasy sports gaming platforms.…”