The impact of persuasive appeals in bilingual language use on social advertising to reduce meat consumption: A study of Dutch (first language) and English (second language)

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2021-06-25

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en

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In the digitally and social media-driven era, the advertising sector has rapidly evolved and therefore made wider impact on different groups of consumers. In line with the rise of sustainability and healthy eating, advertisers are under more pressure to encourage consumers to engage in meat-reducing consumption behaviors. The main purpose of this study was to examine the impact different persuasive advertising appeals on promoting the reduction in meat consumption of bilinguals who have been overlooked by previous research in the context of healthy eating in the Netherlands. To reach this aim, this study adopted a two-way experimental design (appeal: negative vs. positive vs. neutral; language: Dutch vs English) and randomly assigned 152 students to one of these six conditions. ANOVA results showed that Dutch is not superior to English in promoting the intention to reduce meat intake as well as in changing perceived emotionality and attitude toward meat consumption. However, the findings suggested that negative appeal is more effective than positive and neutral appeal in enhancing consumers’ emotional perception of the advertisement. This provides some evidence to encourage advertisers to use stronger negative messages and words in their appeals to more effectively convince bilinguals to engage in meat consumption reduction. Keywords: persuasive appeals, social advertising, meat consumption, bilingual language.

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Faculteit der Letteren