How sympathy and fear mediate the interplay between benefit and scarcity appeal organ donation messages

ABSTRACT

Background

Organ transplantation is the most effective medical procedure to save people who are suffering from terminal organ failure. However, shortages of transplantable organs remain a universal problem. Although more than 90% of the U.S. population supports the concept of organ donation, only 60% are registered donors.

Method

A 2 (other-benefit appeal vs. self-benefit appeal) × 2 (nonscarcity vs. scarcity appeal) online experiment (N = 312) was conducted to examine how sympathy and fear mediate the interplay between benefit and scarcity appeal in organ donation messages.

Results

Other-benefit appeal message generated more sympathy than self-benefit appeal message in organ donation. The nonscarcity condition generated more positive attitudes toward organ donation than the scarcity condition. Sympathy and fear, respectively, exerted a significant impact on attitude and organ donation intentions under the nonscarcity and scarcity conditions.

Conclusion

The results revealed that both sympathy and fear are underlying mechanisms that can change people’s attitudes and intentions of organ donation through different routes. Sympathy motivates people through altruism to reduce others’ suffering, whereas fear motivates people through viewing organ donation behavior as a value to help themselves cope with the fear of death. Because organ donation can remind people of their own death, resource scarcity can exacerbate people’s self-related fear of death, which may motivate them to suppress organ donation-related thoughts, rather than use organ donation as a defensive mechanism to cope with fear of death.

KEYWORDS:

• Organ donation
• other-and self-benefit appeal
• resource scarcity
• sympathy
• fear

Disclosure statement

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

Ethical approval statement

This project received approval from Institutional Review Board of TAMUCC (IRB ID: TAMU-CC-IRB-2020-02-023).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by TAMUCC start-up funding.

Notes on contributors

Sining Kong

Dr. Sining Kong is an assistant professor of Department of Communication and Media at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She earned her Ph.D. degree from University of Florida. Her research interests are health communication, public relations, and digital media.