Grateful compliance: Gratitude effects on willingness to comply with responsible drinking messages

Abstract

Individuals have a tendency to push back against threats and impositions from others that impinge on their perceived freedom. This issue is prevalent among issues with directive messages especially those in social marketing, such as responsible drinking messages. The current research investigates the potential role of gratitude in increasing individuals' willingness to comply with a responsible drinking message. Across four experimental studies, the present research shows that gratitude, as compared with pride and a neutral condition, is more effective in increasing the willingness to comply with the message. Specifically, our research demonstrates that gratitude reduces the psychological reactance evoked by the responsible drinking message, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of the message. The findings of this study can benefit social marketers and policymakers by highlighting the potential benefits of positive emotions to promote well‐being behaviors.

Social influence and stakeholder engagement behavior conformity, compliance, and reactance

“…), fitting with our SEB focus. We in turn posit SEB conformity to facilitate cooperation, SEB compliance to be conducive to coopetition, and SEB reactance to foster competition in the influencor/influencee relationship (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955;Septianto & Garg, 2021;Wolf et al, 2021), revealing key insight. This conceptual paper makes the following contributions to the marketing-based stakeholder engagement (behavior) literature.…”

“…Social influence can manifest in different ways, including through conformity (e.g., Deutsch & Gerard, 1955;Gonçalves et al, 2020), compliance (e.g., Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004;Septianto & Garg, 2021), and reactance (e.g., Clee & Wicklund, 1980;G. Lee & Lee, 2009), among others, as discussed further below.…”

“…When stakeholders agree with and accept an influencor's exerted influence, they are likely to conform their SEB to the influencor's elicited pressure (e.g., Delbaere et al, 2021). As outlined, conformity reflects an individual's (influencee's) modified belief, behavior, or thinking to align with that of the influencor or with prevailing normative standards (Bernheim, 1994; Crutchfield, 1955; Septianto & Garg, 2021). Extending this concept, we develop the notion of SEB conformity , which refers to an influencee's modified SEB, as instigated by an influencor's social influence on him/her, with which (s)he is in full agreement.…”

The persuasiveness of metaphor in advertising

“…We intentionally tested the context of incidental emotions because such examinations provide empirical evidence with high internal validity (Han et al, 2007). Indeed, prior research has demonstrated that the effects of incidental and integral emotions are consistent (Cavanaugh et al, 2015; Duhachek et al, 2012; Lerner & Keltner, 2001; Septianto & Garg, 2021). As such, by investigating incidental and integral emotions, our findings offered strong empirical evidence to our predictions.…”

“…While marketers have widely employed emotional appeals in advertising (Dooley, 2009; Pham et al, 2013; Poels & Dewitte, 2019), the examination of emotional appeals in advertising has mostly focused on positive emotions (Cavanaugh et al, 2015; Poels & Dewitte, 2019; Septianto & Garg, 2021). However, consumers often experience mixed emotions (i.e., negative and positive emotions at the same time) across important events (e.g., wedding day, graduation day; Deng et al, 2016) and common situations (e.g., watching horror movies, listening to music; Heavey et al, 2017).…”