Persuasive Appeals and the Reduction of Skin Cancer Risk: The Roles of Appearance Concern, Perceived Benefits of a Tan, and Efficacy Information

Abstract

This experiment compared the effectiveness of appearance‐based messages focusing on the benefits of tanning and the efficacy of preventive measures on students' intentions to protect themselves against sun‐induced skin damage. Subjects who were high or low on a dispositional measure of appearance concern responded to 1 of 4 essays providing either high or low benefits information, and high or low efficacy information. Overall, subjects low in appearance concern expressed greater intentions to take precautionary measures than did those high in appearance concern. Additionally, the low benefits of tanning message produced greater intentions to take precautions than did the high benefits message. The benefits results suggest 1 mechanism through which sun protection behaviors may be encouraged.

Organic food choices and Protection Motivation Theory: Addressing the psychological sources of heterogeneity

“…This inherent segregation is an appealing feature of PMT in the context of organic food choice and provides an expected structure to use in modeling preference heterogeneity. PMT has been widely applied in health studies (Greening & Stoppelbein, 2000;Houlding & Davidson, 2003;Plotnikoff, Trinh, Courneya, Karunamuni, & Sigal, 2009;Prentice-Dunn, Jones, & Floyd, 1997) (for a meta-analytic review see Milne, Sheeran, & Orbell, 2000) and there have been several applications of the theory to other topics (for a meta-analysis of research see Floyd et al, 2000). PMT has been extended to environmental issues (Bender, Martin, & Raish, 2007;Martens & Rost, 1998;Vaughn, 1993), injury protection (Axelrod & Newton, 1991;Wolf, Gregory, & Stephan, 1986), social concerns and food safety (Cates, Dian, & Schnepf, 2003;Cox & Bastiaans, 2007;Henson, Blandon, Cranfield, & Herath, 2010;Henson, Masakure, & Cranfield, 2008;Plotnikoff & Higginbotham, 1998;Schafer, Schafer, Bultena, & Hoiberg, 1993).…”

Online safety begins with you and me: Convincing Internet users to protect themselves

“…Prentice-Dunn, Jones, & Floyd, 1997). Coping self-efficacy (a = .92, M = 5.28, SD = 1.41) was evaluated with five, sevenpoint Likert-type scales ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.…”

Effects of motives on reactions to safe sun messages

“…Prentice-Dunn, Jones, & Floyd, 1997). Prentice-Dunn et al (1997) speculated that individuals high in appearance motive might have reacted defensively to a safe sun message.…”