Communication strategies for promoting sports participation for health: an examination of goal-framing effects in South Korea

ABSTRACT

The South Korean government has implemented a public campaign promoting sports participation for health since 2005. However, research on the communication strategies of this campaign is limited. This study examined message strategies to promote sports participation for health through two experiments. A convenient sample comprising individuals aged 18–55 years was recruited from a large public university in South Korea. The results of experiment 1 support the basic tenet of goal-framing effects that gain-framed messages are more effective than loss-framed messages in promoting sports participation, which is a typical preventive health behavior. In experiment 2, gain-framed messages for sports participation were further classified into two types: easy but small-gain (ESG) messages and difficult but large-gain (DLG) messages. Experiment 2 examined whether the persuasive impact of the two types of gain-framed messages varies according to individuals’ past sports experience levels (i.e. active vs. occasional sports participants). As predicted, ESG was more persuasive than DLG for occasional sports participants. However, the persuasive effects of ESG and DLG did not significantly differ among active sports participants. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Message framing
• goal-framing
• sports participation
• campaign
• message strategy

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yoonji Ryu

Yoonji Ryu (PH.D., Seoul National University) is a post-doctoral research associate at the College of Sport Science, Sungkyunkwan University. Her research interests focus on sport media, sport consumer behavior, sport development and etc.

Kihan Kim

Kihan Kim (Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin) is a professor of sport management in the Department of Physical Education at Seoul National University (SNU). He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Advertising at The University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. from the School of Journalism at The University of Missouri-Columbia, and a B.A. from the Department of Physical Education at SNU. He is the founding and the current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Global Sport Management. His research interests include sport media, sport marketing communications, and digital sport and esports. His work has appeared in such journals as the Journal of Sport Management, European Sport Management Quatertly, International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, and the International Journal of Advertising, among others.

Yeayoung Noh

Yeayoung Noh (Ph.D., Seoul National University) is a BK assistant professor in Seoul National University. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in sport management from Seoul National University (SNU), Republic of Korea. She is interested in computer-mediated communication focusing on sport media and communication, etc. Noh's work has appeared in such journals as the International Journal of Advertising and Journal of Sport Management, among others.