The Politics of HPV Vaccination Advocacy: Effects of Source Expertise on Effectiveness of a Pro-Vaccine Message

The Politics of HPV Vaccination Advocacy: Effects of Source Expertise on Effectiveness of a Pro-Vaccine Message Persistent public resistance to an apparently safe, effective and life-saving public health practice such as HPV vaccination illustrates a significant issue in the communication of behavioral recommendations based on evidence-based scientific data and consensus views of scientific and medical experts. This study examines the influence of source expertise on pro-HPV-vaccine advocacy messaging effectiveness among audiences of differing political ideologies. The findings support prior research indicating greater resistance to HPV vaccination among political conservatives. Subjects who self-identified politically as Centrists and Conservatives were significantly less likely to think deeply about a pro-HPV advocacy message delivered by an expert spokesperson than were politically self-identified Progressives. Conservatives who viewed a pro-HPV vaccination message delivered by a non-expert spokesperson had significantly more positive attitudes toward HPV vaccination than Conservatives who received no advocacy message (the control condition). By contrast, attitudes of Conservatives who viewed a pro-HPV vaccination message delivered by an expert spokesperson were not significantly different from those who received no advocacy message. The findings suggest an over-reliance on expert spokespeople for delivering science-based behavioral recommendations

News in an era of content confusion: effects of news use motivations and context on native advertising and digital news perceptions

This study examined the effects of differing native advertising framing contexts (hard versus soft news) and individuals’ news use motivations on ability to perceive commercialized content, evaluations of native advertising, and ensuing digital news perceptions. Based upon the framework of the persuasion knowledge model, an online experiment was conducted among a sample of U.S. adults (N = 684). When revealed as advertising, people were more likely to perceive the hard news rather than the soft news framing as commercial in nature. Furthermore, hard news approaches to native advertising were perceived unfavorably by audiences and tarnished the subsequent reporting of actual journalists.Accepted manuscrip

Dimensions of web site credibility and their relation to active trust and behavioural impact

This paper discusses two trends that threaten to undermine the effectiveness of online social marketing interventions: growing mistrust and competition. As a solution, this paper examines the relationships between Web site credibility, target audiences’ active trust and behaviour. Using structural equation modelling to evaluate two credibility models, this study concludes that Web site credibility is best considered a three-dimensional construct composed of expertise, trustworthiness and visual appeal, and that trust plays a partial mediating role between Web site credibility and behavioural impacts. The paper examines theoretical implications of conceptualizing Web sites according to a human credibility model, and factoring trust into Internet-based behavioural change interventions. Practical guidelines suggest ways to address these findings when planning online social marketing interventions

Referencial para a caracterização de websites de hotéis de acordo com as necessidades dos consumidores

Online presence is essential for tourism organisations, and the quality of websites can influence customers. In the case of hotels, there are many studies to evaluate website performance based on functionality, usability and other factors, much less on the amount of different information available to the consumer. In the near future by using Big Data it is expected that hotel websites will be dynamic, they will adapt themselves on-the-fly, showing personalized information to each consumer. Different consumers will have different websites (information? available) from the same hotel. This paper presents a framework for the characterisation of hotel websites, focusing on the amount of information available to the consumer in each website, which was applied in a case study during the last months of 2013 to the websites of five-star hotels that operate in the tourist region of the Algarve, Portugal. The framework allowed to identify a set of exhaustive indicators for hotel website characterisation, which were then grouped into ten fundamental information dimensions. These dimensions further fell into four dimension groups. Finally, it is presented and discussed quantitative and qualitative evaluations, that illustrates which indicators and dimensions are more often considered on hotel websites to satisfy the consumer?s information needs

Perceived Credibility of Information on Internet Health Forums

Internet forums (Yahoo! Answers, Reddit, etc.) have become highly utilized resources that provide informational support on diverse topics. Nearly anyone can contribute information to forums, regardless of their expertise on the topic. Thus, forum users are responsible for evaluating the advice they receive. This raises questions of how information credibility is assessed by users, particularly those seeking health information in forums. There are many explicit and implicit cues that may influence how users evaluate information credibility on health forums, such as spelling accuracy and community star ratings. However, many of these cues have only been examined through interview techniques and not studied experimentally. The present study used the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) as a theoretical framework to explain how forum users evaluated health information under different circumstances. A factorial design was used to examine how perceived credibility of forum advice was affected by community star ratings, the presence or absence of spelling errors, the level of participant involvement, and the context of the severity of the health topic. Results indicated that posts with high star ratings were perceived as significantly more credible than posts with low star ratings, and posts without spelling errors were perceived as significantly more credible than posts with spelling errors. However, results did not support participants’ credibility evaluations of advice through the ELM framework. The lack of support for this framework may have implications for how much effort forum users take to evaluate advice credibility. However, limitations of the study may have played a role in the findings and thus are discussed

Three Research Essays on the Effects of Charity Website Design on Online Donations

This dissertation, which comprises three essays, examines the effects of charity website characteristics on people\u27s attitudes and online donation behaviors based on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Essay 1), the halo effect (Essay 2), and self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric (Essay 3). Essay 1: The Elaborating Role of Personal Involvement with Charity Giving and Helper\u27s High on the Effects of Website Quality: Multiple Roles of Variables Although the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) has been utilized for decades, researchers have not leveraged its full capabilities and richness in understanding the multiple roles postulate and employing the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. The central theme of this study is that cues can assume multiple roles, serving as central or peripheral cues, depending on an elaboration state. Moreover, this study asserts that a variable cannot be determined as a central or peripheral cue without consisting the elaboration state and associated theoretical explanations. This study theorizes and empirically tests the multiples roles postulate in the context of charity website and online donations. Using websites as a persuasion channel, this study investigates the effects of charity website quality, consisting of information content quality and system quality, on attitude toward the charity website, which in turn influences willingness to donate to the charity website. In keeping with the multiple roles postulate, this research investigates two charity-specific motivational constructs, personal involvement with charity giving and helper\u27s high as elaboration states, proposing that people with high personal involvement are more likely to be persuaded by information content, including financial, performance, and donation information. Likewise, individuals who reflect greater helper\u27s high, will rely more on system quality characteristics (including navigability, download delay, visual aesthetics, and security) in evaluating and forming their attitudes toward the charity websites. The results of structural equation modeling supported all hypotheses. This study extends the ELM by supporting the multiple roles postulate that has not received adequate attention in prior research and introducing charity-specific elaboration motivations. Essay 2: Beautiful is Good and Good is Reputable: Multi-Attribute Charity Website Evaluation and Reputation Formation under the Halo Effect The halo effect has been extensively employed to understand how people make judgments of quality about an object. However, there is little research on how people evaluate multi-attribute objects and what types of salient halos exist in their evaluation. In addition, little research has investigated the initial reputation formation of an unknown object. Based on these two research lacuna, the purposes of this study is to identify if there are evidences of various salient halos in evaluating multi-attributes objects and to theorize initial reputation formation. To accomplish these research objectives, this study employs charity websites as a multi-attribute donation channel consisting of three dimensions of information contents (mission, financial, and donation assistance information) and four dimensions of system functionalities/features (i.e., navigability, download speed, visual aesthetics, and security). This study proposes collective halo, aesthetics halo, two-sided quality halo, quality halo, and reputation halo in the context of charity website evaluation. The results of structural equation modeling and other analyses show evidence of the proposed halos. Essay 3: The Effects of Schema Congruity and Visual Consistency on Social Judgment of Charity Websites Effectively designed websites can positively enhance the donors\u27 perceptions so as to facilitate online donations. Drawing on extensive research on self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric, this study examines the effects of schema congruity (SC) and visual consistency (VC) on the perceived warmth and competence of charity websites. This study theorizes schema-visual congruity, an interaction between SC and VC. Using a controlled lab experiment, this study finds significant main effects of schema congruity and visual consistency on perceived warmth and competence. Also, there is a positive interaction between SC and VC, supporting the need for schema-visual congruity as a determinant of perceived warmth and competence. Consistent with prior eCommerce and donation research, this study finds that positive perceptions of charity websites (i.e., warmth and competence) increase attitude toward donation to the website, which in turn influences donation intention

The Valence of Online Consumer Reviews and Purchase Decision: Examining the Moderating Effects of Product Type and Consumer Expertise

The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating effects of product type and consumer knowledge on the relationship between online consumer reviews and purchase decision. An experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses. The results substantiate the argument that the valence of online consumer reviews impacts the consumers’ purchase decision. That is, positive online consumer reviews will have positive effect on the purchase decision while the negative online consumer reviews impact the buying decision negatively. In addition, consumers are more likely to rely on the online consumer reviews to make the purchase decision for the durable products. For the non-durable products, online consumer review is only a supplemental information source for the purchase decision. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications conclude the remark