Young Americans' ethnic identity toward disaster advertising: The effects of disaster location and message types

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine young American donors' perspectives toward disaster ad messages. Attitude toward helping others, social responsibility, ethnic identity on donation behavior, attitude toward ad, and advertising effectiveness were examined using 2 experimental variables (disaster location and message types). The findings explain that the constructs are positively related to each other and the 2 experimental variables significantly influence young Americans' attitudes toward ads and advertising effectiveness. In addition, young Americans expressed stronger feelings concerning attitude toward charity ads, and a higher level of advertising effectiveness was demonstrated when the disaster occurred domestically. Further, emotional messages were considered more persuasive than factual messages. As managerial suggestions, when charities work for domestic disasters, emphasizing patriotism and an emotional message can increase the positive attitude toward ads and advertising effectiveness. On the contrary, when charities work for international disasters, the messages should focus on diminishing distinctions between in-group and out-group perceptions.

How preexisting beliefs and message involvement drive charitable donations: an integrated model

“…In general, cause marketing ads that feature an emotional appeal are more persuasive (Moriuchi and Chung, 2018). Additionally, storytelling increases donations (Merchant et al , 2010) and the best story that can be told to a prospective donor is to use a single, identifiable victim to arouse sympathy (Small, 2011).…”

“…Examples include the Rails to Trails Conservancy, the Better Block Foundation, the National Complete Streets Coalition, the Central Park Conservancy and numerous other organisations that work with governments in public-private partnerships on infrastructure planning. In general, cause marketing ads that feature an emotional appeal are more persuasive (Moriuchi and Chung, 2018). Additionally, storytelling increases donations (Merchant et al, 2010) and the best story that can be told to a prospective donor is to use a single, identifiable victim to arouse sympathy (Small, 2011).…”

“…The challenge for most nonprofit organisations (NPOs) is to develop effective persuasive messages that inform, educate and convince recipients to act (Bendapudi et al , 1996; Cole et al , 2016; Summers and Summers, 2017). Prior research has added to our understanding of these efforts through the impact of diverse elements of the marketing mix (Beale and Bosnal, 2006; Boer and Westhoff, 2006; Hill and Abraham, 2008), while other research has tested specific components of nonprofit advertisements such as leveraging emotions (Choi et al , 2016; Erlandsson et al , 2018; Genevsky and Knutson, 2015; Moriuchi and Chung, 2018), storytelling (Merchant et al , 2010; Small, 2011) and providing specific information about the individual in need (Kogut and Ritov, 2011; Small and Verrochi, 2009; Summers and Summers, 2017). Despite this, few studies examine nonprofit advertising and the messages used that specifically ask for money (Hong and Lee, 2018), exposing a potential gap in the research.…”

Effect of emotional victim images in prosocial advertising: The moderating role of helping mode

“…A neutral victim image condition was not included in the experimental design because a neutral emotion is rarely used in real-world prosocial campaigns. As well, extant literature suggests that emotional appeals are more effective than non-emotional messages in driving prosocial behaviors (Moriuchi & Chung, 2018). A total of 118 Americans (68 male; M age = 32.55, SD age = 8.97) between 18 and 71 years old were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).…”

“…With respect to direct financial donations alone, there is a large body of research looking at emotional appeals in charity advertising (Moriuchi & Chung, 2018; Goenka & van Osselaer, 2019; Septianto & Tjiptono, 2019). Notably, Moriuchi and Chung (2018) found that young Americans were more willing to donate when seeing emotional charity ads than when seeing factual messages. Other research has shown that the discrete positive emotion of pride could be beneficial in charitable advertising (Septianto & Tjiptono, 2019).…”