Effects of Threat Appeals on Persuasion

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate effective components of threat appeal from the viewpoint of the protection motivation theory (PMT). In Study I, 780 university students filled out the questionnaire including measures of variables specified by PMT and preventive intentions about each health or safety problem. As a result of the factor analyses and multiple regression analyses conducted to discriminate the conceptual duplication of PMT, we found that seven variables of PMT could be integrated into the following five: magnitude of threat, rewards of maladaptive response, the effectiveness of recommended coping response, self-efficacy, and costs of adaptive response. In Study II, we examined causal relationships between these five variables and persuasive effects. Five hundred forty-four university women read one of thirty-two kinds of message composed with combinations of the five variables, then rated the intentions of adopting the recommended coping response. The major results obtained were as follows: (1) Magnitude of threat, response efficacy and self-efficacy have positive relationships to persuasion, and rewards and costs have negative relationships to it. (2) Particularly, magnitude of threat and response efficacy were important elements of threat appeals, and size of an effect of magnitude of threat was mediated by response costs. Future study should improve the predictive power of PMT and reexamine a function of fear in PMT.