The After-Effects of Fear-Inducing Public Service Announcements

Author(s)
Udo Wagner, Claus Ebster, Lisa Eberhardsteiner, Madeleine Prenner
Abstract

Messages using fear appeals often appear in social marketing, to promote causes such as smoking cessation, healthcare and driving accident prevention. Fear appeals can enhance the effectiveness of such communications, but they also may have unintended side effects. This study investigates the effect of fear-inducing public service announcements on evaluations of subsequent commercials in a commercial break. In two laboratory experiments, the authors measured participants’ evaluations of advertisements using a program analyzer. In line with affective priming theory, the results showed that fear-inducing public service announcements can negatively affect evaluations of subsequent commercials.

Organisation(s)
Department of Accounting, Innovation and Strategy
External organisation(s)
Fachhochschule Burgenland
Pages
395-411
No. of pages
17
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39120-5_22
Publication date
2016
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
502020 Market research
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/the-aftereffects-of-fearinducing-public-service-announcements(0ab3f2da-32b5-463f-a460-421ce294e78e).html