Filipino Parents’ Attitudes towards TV Advertising and their Controls on Children’s TV Viewing

Abstract

Skepticism towards TV advertisements targeted at children may driveprudent parents to limit their children’s exposure to these commercials. Parentalmediation strategies are among the approaches parents resort to in restrictingtheir children’s TV viewing. This correlational study investigated Filipinoparents’ attitudes towards TV advertising and the controls parents imposed ontheir children’s television viewing. The study hypothesized that parental attitudestowards TV advertising correlate with parental controls on their children’s TVviewing. Two hundred fifty parent-child dyads participated in a face-to-face surveyconducted in early 2011 among urban middle-income households in Cebu City,Philippines. The results show that on average, parents maintained a moderatelynegative attitude towards TV advertising. Majority of the parents restrictedtheir children’s TV viewing, mostly by scheduling and limiting the TV viewingtimes to prioritize study and sleeping hours. However, there are no significantcorrelations between the scores of parents’ attitudes towards TV advertising andthe controls they impose on their children’s TV viewing. The study concludesthat parental controls over their children’s TV viewing are due to reasons otherthan the parents’ evaluation of the undesirable impact of TV advertising. Theresults of this study identify implications to policy makers, marketers, advertisers, children’s advocacy groups, academicians and parents.Keywords: Social Science, TV advertising, parents’ attitudes, parental controls,descriptive-correlational design, Philippines