Effect of the Self-Efficacy on the Perceived Ethicality of Fear Appeals in Anti-Tobacco Advertising

Abstract

The Literature agrees that fear appeals are effective to attract attention and create motivation to quit smoking. However, theses threatening messages can easily raise ethical issues. This article outlines some ethical issues about the use of fear appeals. Also, it tries to understand the effect of perceived self-efficacy of smokers on the ethical judgment of scary advertising. The experimental study that we have conducted reveals that fear appeals are perceived ethical if smokers feel able to implement the recommendation of the message sender. Both the theoretical contributions managerial implications of such a result will be discussed in this paper.