Effects of Responsibility Appeals for Pro-Environmental Ads: When Do They Empower or Generate Reactance?

ABSTRACT

This study compares information campaign messages that appeal to personal responsibility versus those that do not, in attempts to promote efforts to reduce the threat of global warming. In two scenarios, self-efficacy moderates the effects of responsibility appeals on behavioral intentions through perceived consumer effectiveness and self-accountability, but with different patterns, such that the appeals might empower people or else trigger their reactance. In the first scenario (Studies 1 and 3), people are induced to believe that the messages are credible, and responsibility appeals empower participants; behaviors associated with high self-efficacy, but not low self-efficacy, increase the effects of responsibility appeals relative to non-responsibility appeals. In a second scenario, without cues signaling strong credibility, such as when identifiable sources are not present (Study 2) or are not highly credible (Study 3), responsibility appeals trigger reactance; behaviors associated with low/high self-efficacy decrease/increase the effects of responsibility appeals.

KEYWORDS:

• Empowerment
• reactance
• responsibility appeals
• perceived consumer effectiveness
• self-efficacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 None of the effects – main effect (all p > .21), two-way interaction (all p > .45), or three-way interaction (all p > .69) – involving issue type is significant.

2 In a post-test, participants indicated their belief that the pro-environmental ads used in this study without any sources specified are more likely to be sponsored by corporate entities or other types of organizations; a content analysis suggests this common practice (Banerjee et al., 1995; Baum, 2012). Pro-environmental ads sponsored by private corporations tend to be rated lower in credibility than those sponsored by non-profit organizations, because the former usually have vested interests (Lee & Ahn, 2013). The ads used in this study thus can be described as lacking any strong credibility cues.

3 None of the effects – main effect (all p > .37) or two-way (all p > .25), three-way (all p > .44), or four-way (p > .44) interactions—involving the issue type is significant.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan: [grant number 105-2410-H-004 -105 -SS3].