Developing Messages Tailored to Self-construal, Time-orientation, and Perspective Taking to Promote 6-Month Exclusive Breastfeeding

Abstract

Exclusive breastfeeding brings tremendous benefits to the mother and the baby but simultaneously poses great challenges. Research has been limited regarding the effectiveness of persuasive messages to promote exclusive breastfeeding, which leaves us with little understanding of how to enhance the exclusive breastfeeding rates. Guided by the message tailoring literature, this research employed a 2 (self- vs. other-oriented benefits) X 2 (short- vs. long-term benefits) X 2 (acknowledgment of disadvantages: yes vs. no) plus a no-message control condition between-subject factorial design and recruited 521 pregnant women to test the effectiveness of the persuasive messages. A significant interaction between perceived short- and long-term benefits of exclusive breastfeeding and participants’ time orientation was yielded. Additionally, a three-way interaction emerged among the three message manipulations, which shed light on future research on message tailoring. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Notes

¹ Factor loadings and removed items are available from the first author upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the TCU IS (Invest in Scholarship) fund.