Reconsidering the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals: An Experimental Study of Interactive Fear Messaging to Promote Positive Actions on Climate Change

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Abstract

Masspersonal communication has emerged as a compelling alternative persuasive approach in response to the widespread use of social media. It is crucial to comprehend how observing online interpersonal interactions regarding the fear appeal of climate change can foster pro-environmental behaviors among users. This study examines the effects of vicarious message interactivity in promoting actions against climate change and the underlying mechanisms behind this effect. The results of an online experiment conducted in China (N = 236) revealed that psychological reactance and message elaboration mediated the effects of vicarious message interactivity on behavioral intention in a serial indirect effect. In comparison to static fear appeal, interactive fear appeal proves effective in reducing psychological reactance, promoting message elaboration, and ultimately increasing intention to take actions against climate change. Our findings not only contribute to the literature on interactive communication but also provide insights for environmental-health campaigns on social media.

Climate change refers to the long-term alteration of global temperatures and weather patterns primarily caused by human activities (United Nations, 2022). It has led to the degradation of the natural environment, resulting in increased frequency of extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and other detrimental effects that pose significant threats to human life (European Commission, 2022). To mitigate the impact of climate change, it is crucial for the public to engage in pro-environmental actions, such as using public transportation or cycling instead of driving, reducing meat consumption, recycling and composting, and turning off unused electrical appliances (Dietz, Gardner, Gilligan, Stern, & Vandenbergh, 2009).

Previous studies have attempted to develop effective messaging strategies to promote actions against climate change using mass communication approach (Pelletier & Sharp, 2008). Of these, fear appealing has been found to be successful in shaping audiences’ attitudes and behavior toward environmental protection (Chen, 2016; Hartmann, Apaolaza, D’souza, Barrutia, & Echebarria, 2014; Joshi, 2022). However, this fear-induced strategy has sometimes yielded undesirable outcomes, such as individuals engaging in the opposite behavior or being unaffected (Hart & Nisbet, 2012; Kim, Hammond, & Milfont, 2023; Tschötschel, Schuck, Schwinges, & Wonneberger, 2021). In addition, according to psychological reactance theory (Brehm & Brehm, 1981), any attempt to change or control someone’s attitude or behavior may be perceived as a threat to their individual agency and freedom. Therefore, messages that directly reveal their persuasive goals may cause psychological reactance (i.e., the psychological condition or motivational state that is theorized to arise when an individual’s freedom or autonomy is either revoked or jeopardized) among recipients and lead to unfavorable outcomes (Dillard & Shen, 2005).

With social media being widely used, masspersonal communication has emerged as an alternative campaign approach (Shi & Dai, 2022, 2023). This approach involves dyadic interaction between two social media users, which is publicly displayed to campaign audiences (Shi & Dai, 2022), and is likely to achieve high levels of accessibility and identification through such a vicarious interaction (Dai & Shi, 2022; O’Sullivan & Carr, 2018). Importantly, the tenet within this approach echoes with the concept of message interactivity (Wise, Hamman, & Thorson, 2006), which posits that interactive features within web-based communication facilitating an accumulating response to user input can be applied to convey a sense of dialogue and conversationality (Sundar, Kalyanaraman, & Brown, 2003). With the advantages of high accessibility, contingency, and identification, interactive messaging shows potential in concealing persuasive attempts, reducing psychological reactance, and consequently increasing message elaboration and behavioral intention. Therefore, in this study, we first aim to differentiate the impact of fear appeals involving direct information provision for all audiences (static) and the dyadic interactions between two social media users (interactive) in climate change mitigation context. Additionally, we seek to explore the underlying mechanisms that drive the effects of these two message presentations and how individuals’ level of environmentalism (i.e., individuals’ tendency to promote environmental conservation and sustainability within their communities or cultural contexts) moderates their effects. Based on the findings, we aim to develop effective communication strategies on social media for addressing the crucial issue of climate change.

Fear Appeal and Environmental-Health Campaign

Social scientists have long strived to tailor messages and examine the impact of message-based intervention on individuals’ environmental-friendly behaviors (American Psychological Association, 2005). Previous message design scholarship prioritized mass communication approach to reach persuasiveness among massive message recipients, and the message containers (i.e., media outlets) vary from leaflet to poster, from radio to television (De Fleur, 1956; Wicks, 2005). Although with the advent of the Internet and social media, most studies on message intervention still rely on broadcasting and a “one to many” communication manner. Recommended strategies for message interventions are framing, social norms, and emotional appeal across health and environmental contexts (Dillard & Peck, 2000; Nabi, 1999; O’Keefe & Jensen, 2007; Rimal, 2008).

More relevantly, environmental communication scholars have examined the effectiveness of different message interventions on recipients’ pro-environmental behavior (Chen, 2016; Hartmann, Apaolaza, D’souza, Barrutia, & Echebarria, 2014; Herberz, Brosch, & Hahnel, 2023; Hurst & Stern, 2020; Joshi, 2022; Pelletier & Sharp, 2008; Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein, & Griskevicius, 2007; Xue et al., 2016). Among these interventions, fear appeal plays a crucial role in shaping audiences’ attitudes and behavior about environmental protection. For instance, Hartmann, Apaolaza, D’souza, Barrutia, and Echebarria (2014) reasserted the role of fear emotion and confirmed the persuasion effects of fear appeal in promoting pro-environmental intentions among Australians. Similarly, based on the U.S. sample, Joshi (2021) combined biodiversity loss with human health risk to persuade message recipients to conduct sustainable behaviors and found it was effective. Focused on the Chinese context, Chen (2016) and Xue et al. (2016) examined the effects of fear appeal messaging on Chinese citizens’ engagement in pro-environmental behavior and rendered insightful implications for environmental campaigns in China.

Message Presentation and Interactive Fear Appeals in Social Media

The potential dualism between message sender and receiver on social media has shed new light on the development of social media campaigns (Shi, Poorisat, & Salmon, 2018). Scholars have documented that in comparison to mass media, social media plays an impactful role in public health communication (Lee, Kim, & Joo, 2023), and its influence has been extended to contestation and public opinion intervention regarding climate change issues (Mede & Schroeder, 2024). Message design and presentation, as the cores of social media environmental communication, have garnered ample scholarly attention: Liang, Henderson, and Kee (2018) found accentuating different focal points in messages encouraged water reservation intention among recipients; Hasell, Lyons, Tallapragada, and Jamieson (2020) indicated that first-person narrative message is effective to promote acceptance of GM foods as well as climate change related claims. More relevantly, study also connected health issues with concerns about climate change and advocated for policy support to combat it through messages presented and framed in various spatial and temporal distance (Guo & Hou, 2023). Yang and Zhang (2022) compared the effectiveness of numeric and verbal presentation of fear appeal messages in the context of waste sorting.

Indeed, as previously mentioned, designing health fear appeal messages to communicate environmental issues imposes audiences with more likelihood to adopt pro-environmental behaviors by linking personal health with the environment. However, despite these valuable endeavors, researchers have also cautioned scholarship about the null impact and even boomerang effects of certain existing messaging tactics on individuals’ attitudes and behavioral intentions (Hart & Nisbet, 2012; Kim, Hammond, & Milfont, 2023; Tschötschel, Schuck, Schwinges, & Wonneberger, 2021), in that obvious persuasive attempts in fear appeal will result in threat to individual’s freedom (Dillard & Shen, 2005; Quick, LaVoie, Reynolds-Tylus, Martinez-Gonzalez, & Skurka, 2018; Shen, 2015) and message fatigue (Guan, Li, Scoles, & Zhu, 2022; So & Alam, 2019).

Encouragingly, the coming of interactive technologies has blended the boundaries between mass and interpersonal communication (Walther, 2017), scholars (O’Sullivan & Carr, 2018; Walther & Valkenburg, 2017) thus theorized a brand-new communication approach by bridging mass and interpersonal communication, namely the masspersonal communication model (MPCM). Researchers noted the form of “vicarious interaction” online enables audiences to identify with any interactants through viewing others’ dialogue and conversation (Dai & Walther, 2018). In the context of depression symptom counseling, Shi and Dai (2022) have utilized verbal interactions between support seeker and counselor in an online health community to encourage favorable attitudes to such stigmatized illness among interaction observers. The notion of vicarious interaction resonates with some tenets in the model of interactivity (Sundar, 2007; Sundar, Bellur, Oh, Jia, & Kim, 2016) that posits the impact of message interactivity on websites hinges on defining features such as contingency, a sense of agency, and control (Li & Sundar, 2022; Oh, Khoo, Lee, & Sudarshan, 2021). As Hoffman and Novak (1996) distinguished two levels of interactivity: human interactivity, occurring among individuals through a medium, and machine interactivity, involving human engagement with machines for accessing hypermedia content. Therefore, message interactivity in the current study doesn’t only lie primarily between the sender and the receiver; instead, it is rooted in the mediated environment in which all users can both actively and passively engage, displaying both types of interactivities, and operationalization of message interactivity in this study rested on the assumption that users observe vicarious interaction with dialogic feature, showing continuity, reciprocity, and conversationality (Wise, Hamman, & Thorson, 2006).

It is worth noting that interactivity in online comments was documented to be effective for escalating users’ engagement, emotional state and subjective well-being (Erkan & Evans, 2016; Kujur & Singh, 2017; Sciara, Villani, Di Natale, & Regalia, 2021; Wise, Hamman, & Thorson, 2006). More related to our context, Chung and Lim (2022) found that when the health organization responds to a user’s questions on social media, observers will experience a high level of social presence in this interaction and thus leading to a closer distance with risk and more engagement. Focusing on dental health, Vafeiadis (2023) found that reading the original reviews plus subsequent replies from professionals would influence recipients’ trust, commitment, satisfaction, and perception of interactants as well as behavior. A sense of control and mutuality produced from dialogic messages helps in promoting dental examination. Indeed, compared with the direct advocacy of conventional fear appeal, interactive and dialogic fear appeal (i.e., vicarious interaction, others’ conversations) provides a chance for the audience to “overhear” focal points and recommended actions (Shi & Dai, 2023). Therefore, we expect the effects of vicarious message interactivity to facilitate the persuasive effects of climate communication and strengthen audiences’ intention to engage in actions against climate change.

Psychological Reactance, Message Elaboration, and Pro-Environmental Behavioral Intention

According to psychological reactance theory (PRT), psychological reactance refers to “the motivational state that is hypothesized to occur when a freedom is eliminated or threatened” (Brehm & Brehm, 1981, p. 37). This theory acknowledges that a threat to freedom could be an antecedent for an individual’s reactance state (Dillard & Shen, 2007), which means when perceiving and possessing a specific freedom, any driver that prevents the practice of that freedom poses a threat (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Many scholars contend that PRT can serve as an effective framework to understand the failure of persuasion as well as individuals’ negative processing of persuasive messages (Dillard, Tian, Cruz, Smith, & Shen, 2021; Grandpre, Alvaro, Burgoon, Miller, & Hall, 2003; Ma, Dixon, & Hmielowski, 2019; Shen, 2015; Xu, 2017).

Traced back to the fear appeal literature, static messaging dominates the fashion of how to inform the audience about the focal threat through fear emotion (Dillard & Peck, 2000; Nabi, 1999; Witte, 1992). In accordance with the PRT, when receiving message that warns about the potential risks, the attempts in the persuasion to shape, reinforce, or change responses would threaten one’s freedom (Miller, 2013), thus recipients would form the psychological reactance caused by the threat to freedom (Shen, 2015; Shen & Coles, 2015). As former static fear appeal messages mainly adopted a dogmatic, explicit, and controlling language (Shen, 2015). In a similar vein, Xu (2017) and Grandpre, Alvaro, Burgoon, Miller, and Hall (2003) also hold that such reactance would be attributed to controlling the language of message delivery. As a result, conventional fear appeals have been found to generate frustration rather than motivation in environmental campaigns (Reser & Bradley, 2017).

Based on that, many effective strategies have produced to tackle the problem of psychological reactance. For example, using preemptive scripts and restoration postscripts (Richards, Bessarabova, Banas, & Bernard, 2022), applying narrative and other-referencing techniques (Gardner & Leshner, 2016; Moyer-Gusé & Nabi, 2010) and less controlling languages (e.g., Miller, Lane, Deatrick, Young, & Potts, 2007; Quick & Considine, 2008; Xu, 2017), escalating message abstraction/distance (Katz, Byrne, & Kent, 2017) and message sensation value (Quick, 2013). It should be noted that all of these contributions have shown a tendency to increase message attractiveness and reduce explicit fear and controllability within persuasive messages, thus declining the threat to freedom. However, though effective, these considerations are majorly based on static message features. Social media communication evidently suggests that interactive way of information provision may be a promising approach to mitigate reactance and unfavorable effect of appeals among users. For instance, Allsop, Bassett, and Hoskins (2007) found that compared with mainstream media content, online users render more trust in user-generated interactive content (UGC) and tend to perceive user comments to be unbiased, thus showing less reactance. Hanus and Fox (2017) indicated that giving the audience more control of message sources and a higher level of customization will effectively dampen their psychological reactance toward the persuasive message. In addition to that, Li and Sundar (2022) also examined message interactivity in health promotion and indicated that leaving comments in a campaign would spark a sense of agency (instead of reactance) among audiences, which in turn increases the intention to conduct recommended behaviors. In a similar vein, Oh, Khoo, Lee, and Sudarshan (2021) suggested that interactivity presented in the source of anti-smoking campaign is also conducive to alleviate users’ reactance through the sense of community. In summary, considering the preponderance of elevating message engagement and concealing the persuasive attempts, interactive fear appeal is expected to reduce psychological reactance and facilitate subsequent information processing and behavioral intention.

It was acknowledged that the evaluation of persuasive messaging includes elements of message affection, processing, perception, and ultimately, behaviors (O’Keefe, 2003). Thus, the current study posits a serial effects model, from message interactivity to psychological status, information processing, and behavioral intention (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Conceptual model of the current study.

Message elaboration, by definition, means “the process of connecting new information with other pieces of information stored in memory, including prior knowledge, personal experiences, or the connection of two new bits of information together in new ways” (Eveland, 2001, p. 573). Elaboration can serve as an intrapersonal and cognitive activity for recipients to digest and reorganize the information they received. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM, Petty & Cacioppo, 1981) sheds light on the role of information processing in persuasion and it postulated that individuals could enter the dual process to process the persuasive messages, namely the peripheral route and central route. The central route requires more cognitive efforts, which could lead individuals to elaborate messages (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981; Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983). Individuals who have low levels of psychological reactance could make more cognitive efforts, and it will be more likely for them to adopt a central route to elaborate information. Indeed, prior research has indicated that less reactance promotes more elaboration in the message and personal involvement in focal issues (Steindl, Jonas, Sittenthaler, Traut-Mattausch, & Greenberg, 2015).

Although information processing theories have attached much importance to the effects of elaboration on emotions, attitudes, and knowledge (Eveland, 2001; Petty & Cacioppo, 1981; Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983), elaboration has been mapped on individuals’ pro-environmental behaviors. Researchers have contended that reflective thinking effectively leads to behavioral change (Ho, Peh, & Soh, 2013; Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Zhao, Ma, Xu, & Austin, 2024). Contextually, individuals who receive messages presented in interactive dialogue are expected to experience less psychological reactance and generate more elaboration on the message, leading to an increased intention to perform actions against climate change.

The Moderating Role of Environmentalism

In light of the audience segmentation perspective and personalities literature, many scholars have called for an examination of fear appeal message effects considering individual differences in an environmental context (Hine & Gifford, 1991; van den Broek, Bolderdijk, & Steg, 2017; Xue et al., 2016).

Despite the inconsistent conceptualizations of environmentalism, and the overlapping meanings over environmental concern, environmental identity, and environmentalism (Banerjee & McKeage, 1994; Bothello & Salles-Djelic, 2018), the current study conceptualizes environmentalism as the personal values and environment-related beliefs that people have: (1) humans and nature depend on each other that, instead of the dominance by human beings; (2) environment matters to one’s self, the degree to which one cares about environmental issues and one feels close to the environment (3) environment is facing a serious crisis that needs urgent attention; and (4) the current ways of living and producing may need to change to avoid harming the environment (Banerjee & McKeage, 1994).The extant literature claims that environmentalism is highly predictive of pro-environmental behaviors. For individuals who identify themselves as “environmentally-friendly consumers” will have a stronger tendency to engage in pro-environmental behaviors (Brick & Lewis, 2016; Brick, Sherman, & Kim, 2017; Kashima, Paladino, & Margetts, 2014; Whitmarsh & O’Neill, 2010).

Individuals’ identity of environmentalism is vital in climate change mitigation. When it comes to message processing and behavioral induction, scholars supported that one’s environmentalism can serve as the moderating role (Fritsche & Häfner, 2012), and they found a positive impact of environmentalism in mitigating the negative influence of threat on pro-environmental behaviors. Environmentalism might also interfere with the process of responding to messages about climate change. For people in low levels of environmentalism, interactive form of message can escalate their attention and involvement on the environmental issue (i.e., climate change), such influence can essentially eliminate their reactance to the message and promote their action against climate change. The climate-related information provided by others’ conversation in social media also potentially convey environmental norms to observers. On the other hand, for people in high level of environmentalism, two types of message format might exert a positive and similar effect on message acceptance and behavior, as their values and environmental identity will play a leading role in this sense. They will make cognitive efforts to process messages no matter whether the messages are presented in static or interactive forms. Thus, the current study aims to examine the effects of message interactivity on promoting action against climate change based on different levels of environmentalism.

Based on the above considerations, we proffered our hypothesis and research questions:

Hypothesis 1:

H1: Compared with static health fear appeal, interactive health fear appeal will lead to greater intention to take actions against climate change.

Hypothesis 2:

H2: Vicarious message interactivity is negatively associated with psychological reactance.

Hypothesis 3:

H3: Psychological reactance is negatively associated with message elaboration.

Hypothesis 4:

H4: Message elaboration is positively associated with actions against climate change.

Research Question 1:

RQ1: Dose psychological reactance and message elaboration mediate the message interactivity on intention to take actions against climate change in a serial path?

Research Question 2:

RQ1: How will environmentalism moderate the effect of message interactivity on psychological reactance?

Research Question 3:

RQ1: How will environmentalism moderate the effects of message interactivity on intention to take actions against climate change?

Method

Participants

The current study recruited 236 participants via Credamo platform in China in March 2023. “Credamo” is a professional crowdsourcing platform in China akin to Qualtrics and Amazon MTurk. Its sample database currently encompasses over three million respondents spanning diverse age groups, locations (across all 34 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in China), and professions. We initially posted the recruitment on the platform, inviting those who met the eligibility criteria (aged over 18 and residing in China) to voluntarily participate in this questionnaire-based experiment. Participants who provided informed consent and completed the experiment and survey questions were given a 10 RMB incentive. The participants’ age ranges from 19 to 57 (M = 29.71, SD = 6.89), and more than half of them were females (64.8%). As for the education level, 8.1% hold vocational degrees, 72.5% hold bachelor’s degrees, and 19.5% hold master’s and doctoral degrees respectively. The median monthly household income was in the range of CNY10,001 to CNY30,000 (about 1,350 to 4,150 USD). We ran a priori power analysis through G*Power 3.1 to ensure sufficient power. Specifying α = .05, power = .95, effect size f= .25 (medium effect, Cohen, 1988), results suggested a sample size of 210 is required. We have met the criteria with 236 recruited participants.

Design and Procedure

This research conducted a between-subjects online experiment to examine the proposed model. We manipulated vicarious message interactivity (absent vs. present) as a between-subjects factor in the experiment. The interactivity we manipulated aligned with two dimensions of Hoffman and Novak (1996)’s conceptualization. After indicating their consent to participate, participants answered questions about propensity of environmentalism and demographics. Next, they were assigned to one of the two conditions (N_static = 116, N_interactive = 120). They were asked to read a post (or an interaction) about climate change issue on social media. After viewing the stimuli, participants answered questions about their status of psychological reactance, message elaboration, and intention to conduct actions against climate change.

Experiment Materials and Stimuli

Participants were presented with a screenshot from Weibo (an equivalent of X in China). We designed such messages to mock messages commonly encountered in social media. The static message condition presents as a post created by an individual plainly describing the threats posed by climate change for human beings, as well as measures that can help address it. The vicarious interactive message condition presented involves a conversation between two Weibo users discussing the same topic (see Supplementary Materials). In this condition, message about climate change was presented in a Q&A format, where one user raised questions about climate-change-related risks, and the other user provided answers. For instance, “Poster: Is climate change a serious problem in China? Replier: Yes. According to statistics from the China Meteorological Administration, in 2022, extreme weather events occurred frequently in China, and … ” Both messages are approximately 300 words and share the same content retrieved from official Chinese media reports to ensure the messages’ consistency and accuracy. To avoid any experimental confounding, no cues (such as likes, views, retweets) were provided. Additionally, we controlled for the same location and nonsexual feature of the two interactants in the stimuli.

Measures

Psychological Reactance

Following by Ma, Dixon, and Hmielowski (2019), a three-item scale was used by asking participants’ agreement on their psychological states when reading the message (M = 2.25, SD = 0.93, Cronbach’s α = .82).

Message Elaboration

Adapted from the previous study (Eveland, Marton, & Seo, 2004), a six-item scale was used to measure respondents’ elaborative processing on the given message (M = 4.28, SD = .40, Cronbach’s α = .65).

Environmentalism

Environmentalism was measured by seven items adapted from prior study (Banerjee & McKeage, 1994). These questions were asked to reflect participants’ values, preexisting position, and self-identity on environmental issues (M = 4.32, SD= .46, Cronbach’s α = .78).

Intention to Take Actions Against Climate Change

Adapted from Detenber, Ho, Ong, and Lim (2018) and Ertz and Sarigöllü (2019), an eight-item scale was used to measure participants’ intention to take actions against climate change, including individual and collective actions (M = 4.32, SD = .41, Cronbach’s α = .74).

All scales used were 5-point Likert scale. Detailed question wordings have been provided in the supplementary materials.

Analytic Approach

We used SPSS version 26 to analyze the data. Chi-square and one-way analyses of variance were utilized to check the randomization. ANOVA was also applied to test the main effect of the model. Model 86 of the PROCESS Macro in SPSS (Hayes, 2017) with bootstrapped mediation analyses with 5,000 randomly generated subsamples was conducted to analyze the moderated-mediation model we proposed.

Results

Randomization Check and Manipulation Check

To check the success of random assignment of the experiment conditions¹ and our message manipulation on participants,² we conducted a series of chi-square and one-way analyses of variance. Results showed that we both met the criteria of successful randomization and manipulation.

Major Findings

First, regarding the direct effect of vicarious message interactivity, the results revealed that the effect of vicarious message interactivity on intention to take actions against climate change was not significant (F (1, 234) = .73, p = .393, η² =.003), thus failing to support H1.

Second, the hypotheses concerning the indirect effect of vicarious message interactivity were supported: vicarious message interactivity was negatively associated with psychological reactance (B = −0.28, p < .05), psychological reactance was negatively associated with message elaboration (B = −0.13, p < .001), and message elaboration was positively associated with intention to take actions against climate change (B = 0.30, p < .001). Thus, H2, H3, and H4 were supported (See Table 1).

Table 1. Regression models testing the moderated mediation effect (N = 236)

	Psychological Reactance (B)	Message Elaboration (B)	Intention to take actions against climate change (B)
Intercept	2.40***	4.56***	3.07***
Vicarious Message interactivity^a	−0.28*	0.03	−0.02
Psychological reactance	/	−0.13***	−0.00
Message elaboration	/	/	0.30***
Environmentalism	−0.49**	/	0.53***
Message interactivity * Environmentalism	−0.24	/	−0.01
Adjusted R^2	0.12***	0.10***	0.63***

* p <.05, **p <.01, ***p < .001. ^aStatic = 0, interactive = 1.

In addition, we examined the mediation model by conducting boot strapped mediation analyses with 5,000 randomly generated samples. The serial mediation path (indirect effect of message interactivity on intention through psychological reactance and message elaboration) is significant (B = 0.03, 95% CI: [0.01, 0.06]) (See Table 2), which answered our RQ1.

Table 2. Mediation analysis

	B(SE)	95% LLCI	95% ULCI
Indirect effect of message interactivity on intention to conduct actions against climate change
Vicarious Message interactivity ^a → Reactance → Behavioral intention
	0.01 (0.01)	−0.01	0.03
Vicarious Message interactivity → Message Elaboration → Behavioral intention
	0.02 (0.03)	−0.05	0.09
Vicarious Message interactivity → Reactance → Message Elaboration → Behavioral intention
	0.03 (0.01)	0.01	0.06

^aStatic = 0, interactive = 1.

When it comes to the moderating role of environmentalism, our results showed environmentalism did not significantly moderate the effect of message interactivity on intention as well as the effect of message interactivity on psychological reactance, thus answering RQ2 and RQ3. Detailed results were shown in Tables 1 and 2.

Discussion

This study investigated the impact of vicarious interactive fear appeals regarding climate change on the mobilization of actions against climate change and the underlying mechanism. The results demonstrated that while message interactivity cannot directly influence the intention to conduct pro-environmental behaviors, it effectively reduced recipients’ psychological reactance and increased message elaboration, resulting in a higher intention to take positive action on climate change.

Our findings suggest that message interactivity did not directly impact participants’ intention to take actions against climate change. One plausible explanation is that, unlike health issues, individuals may perceive climate change as impersonal and unrelated to them. Consequently, employing innovative dyadic interactions to convey climate change messages may not directly enhance audiences’ intentions. Thus, the variation in appeal format cannot be directly correlated with behavioral change, highlighting the need to consider other affective factors and information processing elements in the overall effects process.

While the direct effects of vicarious message interactivity on the intention to take actions against climate change is not statistically significant, its indirect influence operates through a sequential process involving psychological reactance and message elaboration. Evidently, our study identified that a static fear appeal tends to evoke higher levels of psychological reactance among message recipients compared to an interactive fear appeal. This aligns with the PRT, asserting that attempts to influence or modify responses through persuasion can encroach upon autonomy (Miller, 2013), triggering reactance in response to perceived threats to freedom (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Conventional persuasive messages, delivered in a direct and broadcast manner, often employ explicit and controlling language (Shen, 2015), posing a threat to recipients’ freedom and consequently inducing psychological reactance. Conversely, an interactive message format results in reduced psychological reactance. When individuals observe a public interaction between a poster and a commenter on social media, their perception of general accessibility (O’Sullivan & Carr, 2018) and identification with interactants (Dai & Shi, 2022) may position them as observers rather than persuasion targets, diminishing the perceived threat to their freedom. The interactive presentation of fear appeal information, with its concealed persuasive intent, may lead individuals in the observer role to experience less psychological reactance, as they perceive fewer threats to their freedom.

Additionally, the results indicated a negative correlation between psychological reactance and message elaboration, consistent with prior research (Steindl, Jonas, Sittenthaler, Traut-Mattausch, & Greenberg, 2015). When individuals experience minimal reactance to a message, they are more inclined to engage in deep processing and thoughtful consideration, actively involving themselves in the central issues. According to the ELM, central route message processing demands substantial cognitive effort and fosters elaborate thinking (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981; Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983). Individuals with lower levels of psychological reactance tend to exert greater cognitive effort, engaging in the central route to elaborate on the received messages.

Moreover, there exists a positive association between message elaboration and actions against climate change, aligning with prior research indicating that message elaboration motivates pro-environmental behaviors in the context of climate change (Meijnders, Midden, & Wilke, 2001; Yang, Seo, Rickard, & Harrison, 2015). Individuals with higher levels of message elaboration demonstrate the ability to connect new information with existing knowledge in their memory (Eveland, 2001). Increased cognitive elaboration about reasons supporting action against climate change upon receiving persuasive messages enhances the likelihood of taking action against climate change (Zhao, Ma, Xu, & Austin, 2024).

Our study found no significant difference in message effectiveness between individuals with high and low levels of environmentalism. It is plausible that individuals with low environmental concern may engage with climate change information that they often overlook in conventional appeals through interactive messages. This suggests that interactive formats are effective for enhancing audience engagement and promoting action (Li & Sundar, 2022; Wise, Hamman, & Thorson, 2006) and message interactivity within it mitigates reactance and promotes action, particularly for low environmentalism individuals in our study. Similarly, interactive fear appeals are also effective for high environmentalism individuals, possibly due to message fatigue (So, Kim, & Cohen, 2017), as this group are frequently exposed to homogenous information about environment issues. Message fatigue leads to avoidance, counterargument intentions (Kim & So, 2018), reduced effectiveness (Reynolds-Tylus, Lukacena, & Truban, 2021), and diminished attitudes (Guan, Li, Scoles, & Zhu, 2022). Hence, static fear appeals may fail to persuade among high-environmentalism individuals, whereas interactive format is conducive to reduce reactance and increase action intention.

Implications and Limitations

Our study offers significant theoretical and practical implications. Firstly, building on prior research exploring vicarious interaction in social media campaigns (Dai & Shi, 2022; Dai & Walther, 2018; Shi & Dai, 2023), our work provides the initial evidence comparing the effectiveness of interactivity in message interventions and delving into their underlying mechanisms. This contributes to the expanding literature on message interactivity and vicarious interaction. Secondly, while fear appeal is a widely studied persuasion strategy, prior research has predominantly examined its static form. Our study pioneers the use of interactive dialogue on social media as a novel strategy for delivering fear appeal, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of strategies to mitigate psychological reactance in message campaigns. Thirdly, our research breaks new ground by employing interactive health fear appeals in environmental campaigns on social media. Consequently, our findings establish a theoretical foundation for incorporating this persuasive strategy in future environmental communication efforts within the highly interactive and relational social media environment.

In terms of practical implications, our study offers promising evidence that interactive fear appeals could serve as a potential and effective method for mitigating psychological reactance. This approach has the potential to alleviate fatigue and information avoidance commonly experienced by audiences on social media, leading to more favorable persuasion outcomes. Moreover, our findings indicate nonsignificant moderating effects of environmentalism on the relationship between interactivity strategy and audience response. This encourages climate communicators and environmental practitioners to employ interactive health fear appeals for reaching diverse audiences and designing online environmental campaigns, irrespective of audience identities or propensities.

Our study has several noteworthy limitations that warrant attention. Firstly, our investigation focused solely on the effects of interactivity within fear appeal messages. Future research should explore whether the effectiveness of interactive fear messaging varies across different sources (Dai & Shi, 2022), modalities and interfaces. In addition, interactive appeals might be at risk of disseminating misinformation and disinformation. Some scholars have noted the roles of message format (Huang & Wang, 2022), emotion (Chen & Tang, 2023; Yeo & McKasy, 2021) and credibility (Prike, Butler, & Ecker, 2024) in misinformation intervention, which can influence users’ belief, sharing, and correction of misinformation. Thus, future studies are warranted to consider potential factors in interactive appeals that facilitate impartial and credible information provision while users are fully engaged. Secondly, findings of this study should be cautiously interpreted as the lack of representativeness of our experiment samples. Thirdly, our assessment of recipients’ behavioral responses was limited to a one-time exposure to experimental stimuli, leaving uncertainties about the persistence of such actions in the long term or in response to factors like message repetition. Future research could employ a longitudinal design or multiple message exposures to investigate the longevity of behavioral responses. Lastly, our study exclusively examined the mediating roles of psychological reactance and message elaboration; however, other factors such as positive emotions and message involvement should be considered as potential mediators in future research.

Disclosure Statement

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

Supplemental Data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2024.2360025.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Key Project of the National Social Science Fund of China “The Structural Changes and Research Paradigm Transformation of Journalism and Communication in the 5G Era”(21AZD143) and The Humanities and Social Sciences Independent Research Fund of Tsinghua University.

Notes

¹ We found participants did not differ on education (F (1, 234) = 1.88, p = .17), age (F (1, 234) = 0.03, p = .87), income (F (1, 234) = 0.13, p = .72), and gender (x² (1) = 0.36, p = .55) between two conditions.

² We asked our participants one question about “To what extent you agree the above material presented a conversational interaction online” by conducting independent t-test. The results showed that participants in the interactive message condition significantly perceived a higher level of message interactivity (M = 4.73, SD = 0.48) than those in the static message condition (M = 1.52, SD = 0.84), t (181.794) = −35.97, p < . 001.