Linking Sadness Appeal With Gain and Hope Appeal with Loss: Communicating a Novel Marine Disease

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Environmental Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

The recent appearance of the sea star wasting disease among thousands of sea stars along the U. S. west coast has attracted substantial attention. In response to this novel environmental issue, two experiments were conducted to examine the effectiveness of two emotional appeals. Experiment 1 compared a sadness appeal, a hope appeal and a control condition (no message), and found that, in general, both the sadness appeal and the hope appeal were more persuasive than the control condition in heightening a number of behavioral intentions, such as support for policies, information seeking, and pro-marine environment behaviors. Experiment 2 not only compared the sadness appeal and the hope appeal with a neutral message condition, but also investigated the interaction effects of the two emotional appeals with gain versus loss frame. This experiment provides initial evidence that a sadness appeal will be more effective when it is accompanied by a gain frame and that a hope appeal tends to have greater impacts when it is juxtaposed with a loss frame.

Author

• Hang Lu, Cornell University