Can Happiness and Sadness Overcome Organ Donation Barriers Following Exposure to Radio Ads?

Abstract

Concerns related to bodily integrity, medical mistrust, superstition, and disgust with respect to organ transplantation remain commonly cited barriers among African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic non-donors. The current study examined two narrative strategies for mitigating these barriers by eliciting feelings of happiness or sadness. African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic non-donors (N = 576) were randomly assigned to a radio ad that communicated either a recipient narrative or a waiting list narrative. As expected, the recipient narrative elicited greater feelings of happiness whereas the waiting list narrative aroused greater feelings of sadness. Moderated mediation analyses revealed models in which happiness, not sadness, was the mediator, such that the narrative frame was associated with ad persuasiveness. Additionally, only medical mistrust interacted with happiness to predict ad persuasiveness The results are discussed with an emphasis on message design strategies to employ among reluctant adult African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic potential donors.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2024.2313988

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).