Emphasis Framing Research Articles

How nutrition information frame affects parents’ perceptions of restaurants: The moderating role of information credibility

Adding easy-to-read information on menus is recommended for customers’ healthy food selections. But what format yields the best outcomes for restaurateurs has not been investigated. We use the emphasis framing effect as a theoretical lens to examine how the credibility of nutrition information affects parents’ perceptions of restaurant healthfulness and trustworthiness when exposed to two nutrition information frames on children's menus: numeric values only and numeric values with low-calorie symbols. The results of the experimental study show that parents who do not perceive nutrition information as being highly credible perceive restaurants providing numerical values only as more healthful and trustworthy. However, parents who do perceive nutrition information as being highly credible perceive restaurants as more healthful and trustworthy when both numeric values and low-calorie symbols are presented and have more positive perceptions overall. We advise restaurateurs to increase nutrition information credibility and provide additional easy-to-read information to elicit more positive perceptions.

The limited effect of economic self-interest on the political attitudes of the mass public

Tax morale has been a focus of academics and policy makers for some time. The measurement of individuals’ tax morale is subjective, and various proxies have been employed in qualitative and quantitative research. The framing of these measures has been considered in some research with respect to equivalency or goal framing, but the underlying implication of emphasis framing in commonly used proxies has yet to be considered. Further, although fairness and financial literacy have been considered determinants of tax morale, no one has yet considered whether financial and tax literacy (FTL) has a moderating effect on fairness and tax morale.This research addresses these gaps in the literature. The findings suggest that questions and scenarios posed by academics and policy makers should consider positive, negative, and emphasis framing, as well as the moderating effect of the respondents’ FTL to measure individuals’ tax morale effectively. The findings also suggest that raising levels of FTL could have a double dividend: not only will improved FTL have a positive impact on tax morale, but it might be magnified through the impact of fairness. These findings hold only when morale is determined by negatively framed scenarios. In particular, the perceived fairness of the tax system enhances tax morale when FTL is high, whereas the perception of fairness has no effect on tax morale for respondents with lower levels of FTL.