Exploring the Persuasion Effects of Threatening Content in COVID-19 Advertising: The Roles of Threat Intensity and Sensation Seeking on Consumer Attitudes

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a wave of advertising activities advocating care for the community in a time of crisis. These COVID-19 ads often feature threatening depictions of the crisis as a persuasion strategy. Hence, the present study explores the persuasion effects of COVID-19 advertising by focusing on threat persuasion. Specifically, by adopting an online experiment with 724 U.S. participants, this study investigates how the threat intensity of crisis depictions featured in COVID-19 ads (low vs. medium vs. high) interact with individual differences in sensation-seeking in order to impact ads and brand attitudes, through the mediating pathways of positive moral emotions (warmth and gratitude) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) authenticity. The results reveal that the high-threat crisis depiction generates the lowest warmth and ad attitudes, whereas the medium-threat crisis depiction yields the strongest gratitude and better brand attitudes than the low-threat crisis depiction, but only for low sensation seekers (LSS). Also, for LSS, exposure to the medium-threat (versus low-threat) crisis depiction increases their gratitude, which leads to higher CSR authenticity, and, eventually results in more favorable ad or brand attitudes. On the contrary, for high sensation seekers, threat intensity does not have an indirect effect on the ad or brand attitudes via warmth, gratitude, and CSR authenticity

Social Facilitation in Fear Appeals Creates Positive Affect but Inhibits Healthy Eating Intentions

The social facilitation of eating plays a significant role in influencing individuals’ eating decisions. However, how social eating cues are processed in health promotion messages is unclear. This study examined individuals’ food craving in response to social cues in images (Experiment 1) and emotional experiences, perceived threat, perceived efficacy, behavioral intentions, and motivational coactivation elicited by social eating cues in obesity prevention fear appeals (Experiment 2). Results suggested that the presence of a group of people eating in an image facilitated food craving for the presented foods. Moreover, fear appeals that presented obesity and its consequences with more social eating cues, versus individual eating cues, generated greater positive emotional responses, perceived threat severity, response and self-efficacy, and motivational coactivation indicating more attention and threat vigilance. However, these cues also generated fewer self-reported intentions to change unhealthy eating behaviors. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed