Fear Appeals: Segmentation is the Way to Go

Quinn, Valerie; Meenaghan, Tony; Brannick, Teresa

doi:10.1080/02650487.1992.11104511

Cited by 52 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…One explanation proposed for such inconclusive findings in the fear appeal literature is that individuals differ in how personally relevant they perceive a particular threat to be (Burnett & Oliver, 1979;Quinn et al, 1992). It follows, that if individuals differ in their perceptions of personal relevance to a threat then the nature and intensity of the emotional response(s) they experience to that threat are also likely to differ (LaTour & Rotfeld, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…According to this view, increasing the level of fear induced would increase message persuasiveness up until some critical point at which, once exceeded, the level of fear becomes excessive, resulting in avoidance and rejection of the message (Janis, 1967;Quinn, Meenaghan, & Brannick 1992;Ray and Wilkie, 1970). Some empirical support exists for the curvilinear view with studies indicating that fear is positively associated with both message acceptance and message rejection (Lewis, 2002;Tay & Watson, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Examining the effectiveness of physical threats in road safety advertising: The role of the third-person effect, gender, and age

Lewis

Watson

Tay

2007

Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviou

124

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Threatening advertisements have been widely used in the social marketing of road safety.However, despite their popularity and over five decades of research into the fear-persuasion relationship, an unequivocal answer regarding their effectiveness remains unachieved. More contemporary "fear appeal" research has explored the extent other variables moderate this relationship. In this study, the third-person effect was examined to explore its association with the extent male and female drivers reported intentions to adopt the recommendations of two road safety advertisements depicting high physical threats. Drivers (N = 152) first provided responses on pre-exposure future driving intentions, subsequently viewed two advertisements, one antispeeding and one anti-drink driving, followed by measurement of their perceptions and postmanipulation intentions. The latter measure, post-manipulation intentions, was taken as the level of message acceptance for each advertisement. Results indicated a significant gender difference with females reporting reverse third-person effects (i.e., the messages would have more influence on themselves than others) and males reporting classic third-person effects (i.e., the messages would have more influence on others than themselves). Consistent with such third-person effects, females reported greater intention not to speed and not to drink and drive after being exposed to the advertisements than males. To determine the extent that third-person differential perceptions contributed to variance explained in post-manipulation intentions, hierarchical regressions were conducted. These regressions revealed that third-person scores significantly contributed to the variance explained in post-manipulation intentions, beyond the contribution of other factors including demographic characteristics, pre-exposure intentions and past behaviour. The theoretical and applied implications of the results are discussed.2

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the effectiveness of physical threats in road safety advertising: The role of the third-person effect, gender, and age

Lewis

Watson

Tay

2007

Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviou

124

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“…With respect to advertisements that appeal to fear, Burnett and Oliver (1979), Burnett and Wilkes (1980), Quinn, Meenaghan, and Brannick (1992), and Tay, Ozanne, and Santiono (2000) argued that it is impossible to reach a whole target group with only one fear appeal, and that some types of fear appeal may affect some individuals more than others. A number of moderating factors may affect the way in which fear appeal and the embedding context are processed.…”

Section: The Role Of Medium Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fear Appeal in Traffic Safety Advertising: The moderating role of medium context, trait anxiety, and differences between drivers and non-drivers

Janssens

Pelsmacker

2007

PSYCHOL BELG

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The impact was investigated of the intensity of a fear appeal, the valence of the medium context, and the individuals' trait anxiety and personal relevance on the responses of 197 individuals to anti-speeding advertisements. A high level of fear attracts more attention. A negative valence context leads to a more positive anti-speeding attitude. The most important moderating effect of trait anxiety is that the attitude is more positive when low-anxiety individuals are exposed to high fear appeals in a context with negative valence than in a positive context. These results were largely replicated for drivers, but not for nondrivers for whom there was only an attention-getting effect of high fear appeal. Theoretical and practical implications for anti-speeding campaigning are discussed.Previous research on the responses to (various levels of) fear appeal are inconclusive. This may be due to potentially important moderating factors that have not been taken into account. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of high and low levels of fear appeal on the attention to an anti-speeding message and the attitude toward speeding, and to study the moderating role of positive and negative medium context, trait anxiety, and personal relevance.Witte (1994, p. 114) defined a fear appeal as "… a persuasive message that attempts to arouse the emotion fear by depicting a personally relevant and significant threat and then follows this description of the threat by outlining recommendations presented as feasible and effective in deterring the threat." Fear appeal can be weak or strong. A key element in the effectiveness of fear appeal is the type of processing that takes place. Two processes are commonly mentioned, i.e., a fear control process (maladaptive behaviour or message rejection) and a danger control process (adaptive behaviour or

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“…This issue reflects a large variety of personally subjective, and culturally based values and attitudes, making it somewhat difficult to define (Boddewyn and Kunz, 1991). Second, many critics consider the use of fear appeals unethical if the advertised solution does not eliminate the threat (Spence et al, 1972;Boddewyn et al, 1991;Quinn et al, 1992;Treise, Weigold, Conna and Garrison, 1994;LaTour et al, 1996;Shiv, Edell and Payne, 1997). Furthermore, critics argue that the use of threatening messages shows a lack of societal responsibility from advertisers as advertisements contribute to the development of social norms (Duke et al, 1993;LaTour et al, 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many studies posit that these threatening messages will lead to a desired behavioural change (e.g. Leventhal, Singer and Jones, 1965;Dabbs and Leventhal, 1966;Rippetoe and Rogers, 1987;Quinn, Meenaghan and Brannick, 1992;Brouwers and Sorrentino, 1993;Bagozzi and Moore, 1994;Bennett, 1996;LaTour et al, 1996;LaTour and Rotfeld, 1997). Despite the extensive use of threatening messages in advertising, however, the marketing literature has paid very little attention to the ethicality of such persuasive devices (Duke, Pickett, Carlson and Grove, 1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethicality of Using Fear for Social Advertising

Arthur¹,

Quester²

2003

Australasian Marketing Journal

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While a substantial body of literature has examined the effect of fear appeals in advertising, few, if any, studies have looked into the ethicality of using such threatening messages, particularly for socially desirable outcomes. In this paper, a review of the different theories of ethics leads to the development of an empirical study where the effects of using both physically and socially threatening messages to encourage juveniles to develop anti-smoking behavioural intentions were tested. Using the data collected from a convenience sample of about 250 undergraduates from the University of Adelaide, the results show that fear appeals may indeed be perceived as unethical, even when used for socially desirable purposes. Moreover, social threats were perceived as more unethical and generated less fear than physical threat, suggesting that their use may be counter productive with this type of population. Finally, ethicality did not appear to relate necessarily to change in behavioural intentions.

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Fear Appeals: Segmentation is the Way to Go

Cited by 52 publications

References 12 publications

Examining the effectiveness of physical threats in road safety advertising: The role of the third-person effect, gender, and age

Examining the effectiveness of physical threats in road safety advertising: The role of the third-person effect, gender, and age

Fear Appeal in Traffic Safety Advertising: The moderating role of medium context, trait anxiety, and differences between drivers and non-drivers

The Ethicality of Using Fear for Social Advertising

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