The effects of message framing on online health headline selection of female users: A moderation of approach/avoidance motivation

Abstract

BackgroundMore and more females are diagnosed with and die of cancers. Acquiring cancer-related information and enriching one’s knowledge of cancers are important to cancer prevention and treatment. Effective online health headlines are indispensable to encouraging the reading of the hyperlinked health articles, especially those on daunting topics such as cancers. ObjectiveThis study aims to reveal how message framing, i.e., gain- or loss-framing, influences female users’ selection of cancer-related health headlines at two levels, i.e., attention and behavior. MethodsAn eye-tracking experiment was conducted to capture female participants’ attention and clicking behavior in response to cancer-related headlines manipulated in terms of message framing. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S- O-R) framework was introduced to develop the research model that also took approach/avoidance motivation into account as moderator. ResultsCompared with loss-framed headlines, gain-framed ones attracted more and longer fixations (β = .09, p < .01; β = .12, p < .01) as well as more clicks (exp(B) = 1.76, p < .001), and they additionally evoked a higher level of pleasure (β = .50, p = .00) yet a lower level of arousal (β=-.16, p = .00). Arousal partially mediated the relationship between message framing and headline selection (β = .16, p = .00; β = .16, p = .00; exp(B) = 1.8, p = .00). The participants high in approach motivation devoted more attention to gain-framed headlines than to loss-framed ones (F(1,1333) = 15.74, p < .001; F(1,1333) = 31.94, p < .001). ConclusionGain-framing is a preferred technique over loss-framing for online health information providers to create effective headlines of cancer-related information. Using gain-framed headlines helps alleviate cancer information avoidance and enrich people’s knowledge of fatal diseases.