Exploring the persuasive effects of altruistic behaviour framing with affect-inducing images in print advertisements.

Abstract

A type of goal-framing in health-promoting messages that is researched infrequently is altruistic behaviour framing (ABF) where the recipient of the message is not the direct beneficiary of the advocated behaviour but instead someone else benefits when the message recipient conforms to the advocated behaviour. The current study focused on exploring the persuasive effects of goal-framing in advertisements on behavioural intentions of participants in the altruistic setting of blood donations. The current study included the use of affect-inducing images with the prediction that matching affect-inducing images would amplify the persuasive effects of both gain- and loss-framing in advertisements as recent studies found that gain-framing evokes positive affect and loss-framing evokes negative affect. The first goal of this study was to research if the effectiveness of goal-framing is also applicable to the altruistic topic of blood donations and secondly if images evoke affect and if affect is a mediator between the framed message and behavioural intent to donate blood.