Exploring linkage of message frames with personality traits for political advertising effectiveness

ABSTRACT

This study examined the different and combined effects of regulatory focus (i.e. prevention-focused vs. promotion-focused) and issue involvement (i.e. high vs. low) with message frames (i.e. prevention-framed vs. promotion-framed) on attitude toward ads, message preference, and voting intention. Taken together, our findings revealed statistically significant two-way interaction effects of regulatory focus and message frames on all dependent measures, including attitude toward ads, message preference and voting intention; however, neither regulatory focus nor message frames exhibited primary effects on those dependent variables. Further, issue involvement was found to have a statistically significant main effect on dependent measures, which negated our expectation of both its interaction effect with message frames and its moderating role between regulatory focus and message frames.

KEYWORDS:

• Message frames
• regulatory focus
• issue involvement
• political advertising

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Eun-Kyoung Han is a full professor at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication in Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea.

Chanho Park is an assistant manager of public relations team of KT Skylife, South Korea.

Hyoungkoo Khang (Ph.D., University of Florida) is an associate professor at the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, University of Alabama, USA.