Role of Narrative Perspective and Modality in the Persuasiveness of Public Service Advertisements Promoting HPV Vaccination

ABSTRACT

In the context of public service advertisements promoting human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, the current research examines 1) the relative persuasiveness of narrative vs. non-narrative messages and 2) the influence of narrative perspective (first- vs. third-person) and modality (text-based vs. audio-based) on message effectiveness. Results of a controlled experiment (N = 121) suggested that both a non-narrative message and a first-person narrative message led to greater perceived risk of getting HPV than a third-person narrative message. There was no difference in risk perception between the non-narrative and first-person narrative conditions. These findings were confined to the text-based condition, however. When the messages were audio-based, no differential message effects were detected. The analysis also provided partial evidence for an indirect effect of narrative perspective on intentions to vaccinate against HPV through HPV risk perception. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Notes

¹ Full message stimuli are available from the first author upon request.

² In the analysis by De Graaf et al. (2012), items for Imagery and Being in Narrative World loaded on one factor. Given the conceptual distinction between the two concepts, we believed it would be valuable to examine the impact of narrative perspective and modality on Imagery and Being in Narrative World as separate dimensions. As such, we set the factor analysis to extract four factors and the items loaded expectedly on the four dimensions.

³ A post hoc power analysis assuming a medium effect size and an alpha level at 0.05 indicated that the current design had a power of 0.77 to detect main effects and 0.67 to detect interaction effects.