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The After-Effects of Fear-Inducing Public Service Announcements

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Dynamic Perspectives on Managerial Decision Making

Part of the book series: Dynamic Modeling and Econometrics in Economics and Finance ((DMEF,volume 22))

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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We use the expression advertising effectiveness in a broad, common sense here but concede that there are many different measures of advertising effectiveness used in the literature: attitude towards to ad, awareness, liking, recall, persuasiveness etc.

  2. 2.

    Differences in depth of theoretical reasoning and level of detail cause the terminological difference between hypothesis and research question.

  3. 3.

    The empirical research analyzes the effect of two exposures of the same fear-inducing PSA on the subsequent neutral commercial. Because of this rather limited scope we do not claim, however, this project to be a comprehensive investigation of effects of multiple (i.e. more than double) exposures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, University of Vienna, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, A-1090, Vienna, Austria

    Udo Wagner, Claus Ebster & Lisa Eberhardsteiner

  2. University of Applied Sciences Burgenland, Campus 1, A-7000, Eisenstadt, Austria

    Madeleine Prenner

Authors
  1. Udo Wagner
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  2. Claus Ebster
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  3. Lisa Eberhardsteiner
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  4. Madeleine Prenner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Udo Wagner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration and Economics and Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

    Herbert Dawid

  2. Department of Business Administration, University of Vienna, Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Karl F. Doerner

  3. Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Gustav Feichtinger

  4. Department of Econometrics and Operations Research & CentER, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Peter M. Kort

  5. Department of Business Administration, University of Vienna, Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Andrea Seidl

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Wagner, U., Ebster, C., Eberhardsteiner, L., Prenner, M. (2016). The After-Effects of Fear-Inducing Public Service Announcements. In: Dawid, H., Doerner, K., Feichtinger, G., Kort, P., Seidl, A. (eds) Dynamic Perspectives on Managerial Decision Making. Dynamic Modeling and Econometrics in Economics and Finance, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39120-5_22

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