Anti-alcohol campaigns effects depending on target drinking levels and source perception

摘要

Alcohol consumption represents a major problem forpublic health. As a consequence, there is a growinginterest in understanding which communication strategieshave the ability to increase the persuasive power of anti-alcohol campaigns. Many designers of health campaignsuse both actors and real people interchangeably to delivertheir messages. Nevertheless, little is known regardingwhich of these two types of message sources are morepersuasive. AimandMethodology. In this study, we used anexperimental design to explore the effect of recipients’perceptions of the message source (presented as eitherreal people or actors) on their drinking intentions. Results.We observed a significant difference in the drinkingintentions as an effect of our manipulation, depending onprevious recipients’ drinking levels. Heavy consumerswere more readily persuaded by the real source message.In contrast, light consumers showed less drinkingintentions after receiving the message from the fictionalsource than from the real one. Conclusions. This indicatesthat in the context of anti-alcohol campaigns, the samestrategy could have both positive and negative effectssimultaneously on different target groups. Theoretical andpractical implications of our findings are discussed.