Persuasive Cued Research Articles

The nexus of scam and fake news: An exploratory study of cases of fake news-scams in Singapore

The increasing prevalence of fake news as well as scams has been a cause for concern for authorities in Singapore in recent years. In particular, the concurrent rise in fake news and online scams has shown signs of convergence in the form of fake news-scams, where false information is manipulated and employed in scams. However, literature examining this emerging phenomenon is scarce. As such, this study aims to deepen our understanding of this novel issue by exploring how scammers employ fake news in terms of type, channels of transmission, and persuasion techniques. Drawing from local case studies ( n = 90) collected from 2016 to 2021, it was found that authority appeals were the most common theme employed in fake news-scams, and persuasion cues of authority were the most prevalent. In addition, Facebook was identified as the most common channel of transmission in the spread of fake news-scams. These findings serve to inform anti-scam prevention measures by local authorities and suggestions are made as to how various stakeholders (e.g. authorities, companies, and individuals) can be involved in dealing with fake news-scams.

The persuasion cues that make video advertising go viral: a conceptual replication and extension comparing viral vs. Non-viral advertising

ABSTRACT This study is a conceptual replication and extension of Segev and Fernandes (2023). Building on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) that highlights the role of peripheral and central ad cues, this research explores the executional features of viral and non-viral ads. Findings from a quantitative content analysis of 684 video ads shared online show differences between the two types of ad categories in terms of the ads’ objective, length, and their use of peripheral over central cues. The purpose of viral ads is primarily to promote a specific image for the advertised brand rather than provide information and they are longer than 60 seconds. Viral ads include more emotional appeals while non-viral ads include more rational appeals. Differences were also shown in the use of other executional cues such as celebrities and popular music, as well as the inclusion of weak vs. strong arguments. As video advertising is a cost-effective strategy for brands to spread their messages and gain traffic faster than traditional paid advertising, this study provides empirical guidance for advertisers about the executional components that characterize viral and non-viral ads, which can inform the design process of video ads based on their intended strategic objectives.

Persuasive cues and reciprocal behaviors in influencer-follower relationships: The mediating role of influencer defense

In today's internet ecosystem, social media influencers serve a central purpose in the creation of a compelling online presence that engages their followers. This study examines the impact of social attractiveness, physical attractiveness, attitude homophily, actual self-congruity, and parasocial interactivity on influencer defense and purchase intention in the context of beauty influencers. A total of 689 respondents were recruited using Sina Weibo, one of the largest social media platforms in China. The results demonstrate that physical attractiveness, attitude homophily, actual self-congruity, and parasocial interactivity are crucial in affecting influencer defense. However, only attitude homophily, actual self-congruity, and parasocial interactivity emerged as significant predictors of purchase intention. The findings afford insights that can further understanding of the influencer-follower relationship in the social media environment.

Determinants of debunking information sharing behaviour in social media users: perspective of persuasive cues

PurposeSharing and disseminating debunking information are critical to correcting rumours and controlling disease when dealing with public health crises. This study investigates the factors that influence social media users' debunking information sharing behaviour from the perspective of persuasion. The authors examined the effects of argument adequacy, emotional polarity, and debunker's identity on debunking information sharing behaviour and investigated the moderating effects of rumour content and target.Design/methodology/approachThe model was tested using 150 COVID-19-related rumours and 2,349 original debunking posts on Sina Weibo.FindingsFirst, debunking information that contains adequate arguments is more likely to be reposted only when the uncertainty of the rumour content is high. Second, using neutral sentiment as a reference, debunking information containing negative sentiment is shared more often regardless of whether the government is the rumour target, and information containing positive sentiment is more likely to be shared only when the rumour target is the government. Finally, debunking information published by government-type accounts is reposted more often and is enhanced when the rumour target is the government.Originality/valueThe study provides a systematic framework for analysing the behaviour of sharing debunking information among social media users. Specifically, it expands the understanding of the factors that influence debunking information sharing behaviour by examining the effects of persuasive cues on debunking information sharing behaviour and the heterogeneity of these effects across various rumour contexts.

Antecedents and Moderators of Promotion Messages for Trust in Mobile Banking Services: An Elaboration Likelihood Model Perspective

ABSTRACT This paper applies a theory of persuasion using the elaboration likelihood model to explain how communication messages from mobile banking services are interpreted by receivers to increase their trust in mobile banking. We explain how users’ security and privacy concerns moderate the central route persuasion relationship between argument quality and trust. A questionnaire survey is employed to test a research model. The findings indicate that central and peripheral route persuasion cues enforce users’ trust in mobile banking services. Users with strong privacy and security concerns are more likely to rely on the quality of arguments of the messages. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in the paper.

A content analysis of sports and energy drink advertising

This study identifies constructs from key persuasion theories that are present in popular sports and energy drink advertising. A theory-driven content analysis was conducted on 315 popular television and social media sports and energy drink advertisements from top selling brands. The advertisements were analyzed for the presence of persuasive cues as per the Elaboration Likelihood Model (e.g, onscreen consumption, presence of celebrities) as well as Reasoned Action behavioral expectancies and normative beliefs Approach related to consumption. Descriptive statistics were calculated. Differences between sports and energy drinks were assessed and reliability statistics for all codes were calculated. Advertisements relied on peripheral cues like sports and celebrities that were not related to the drinks themselves. Theory-relevant beliefs about improved athletic performance and consumption of the drinks onscreen were common. Sports drinks were more likely to focus on mainstream sports; energy drinks featured extreme sports, and energy drink advertisements promoted the drinks for use beyond sports (e.g., work settings). The cues and beliefs identified in these ads help to clarify the role of advertising in beliefs about sports drinks being healthy and energy drinks being helpful to achieve goals. Future research is needed that links exposure to coded advertisement features to adolescents’ beliefs about sports and energy drinks.

The Relationship Between Persuasion Cues and Idea Adoption in Virtual Crowdsourcing Communities

Building on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and absorptive capacity, this study develops a four-dimensional model of idea adoption in Virtual Crowdsourcing Communities (VCCs) and examines the influence of different persuasion cues on idea adoption. The research model was tested using hierarchical logistic regression based on a dataset from the Tableau community. The results show that both community recognition of users and community recognition of ideas are positively related to idea adoption. Proactive user engagement has a significant positive impact on idea adoption, while reactive user engagement has no significant impact. Idea content quality, represented by idea length and supporting arguments, has an inverted U-shaped relationship with idea adoption. Community absorptive capacity positively moderates the curvilinear relationship between idea content quality and idea adoption. These results contribute to a better elucidation of the persuasion mechanisms underlying idea adoption in VCCs, and thus provide important implications for open innovation research and practice.

Mapping the influence of influencer marketing: a bibliometric analysis

PurposeThe advent of social media has led to the emergence of influencers and the domain of influencer marketing (IM). Despite being a popular and evolving research domain, it still lacks a comprehensive and systematic bibliometric analysis in the field. This study attempts to fill this critical gap by mapping the influence of IM to understand the intellectual structure and propose a future research agenda for scholars working in the domain.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have used VOSviewer and Biblioshiny packages for conducting a variety of analyses such as citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, keyword analysis and three-field plot analysis.FindingsThe main findings include identifying six clusters in the domain, i.e. “mechanism of IM,” “measuring the impact of IM,” “persuasive cues in IM,” “likability factors of influencers,” “authenticity of influencers” and “understanding followers.” Future research guidelines have been proposed in each of the six clusters, followed by research and managerial implications, conclusion and limitations.Originality/valueThis study is probably the first attempt at providing a comprehensive bibliometric analysis in the domain using a combination of VOSviewer and Biblioshiny packages.

Phishing Email Detection using Persuasion Cues

Phishing is an attempt to acquire sensitive information from an unsuspecting victim by malicious means. Recent studies have shown that phishers often use persuasion techniques to get positive responses from the recipients. Still missing from this literature are studies assessing effectiveness of persuasion cues in phishing email detection. Specifically focusing on gain and loss persuasion cues, we address the following research questions: In detecting phishing emails, (1) how effective are the gain persuasion cues, (2) how effective are the loss persuasion cues, and (3) how effective is an integrated model of gain and loss persuasion In order to address the research questions, we create three machine learning models, with relevant gain persuasion cues, loss persuasion cues, and combined gain and loss persuasion cues respectively, and compare the estimates with a baseline model that does not account for the persuasion cues. The results show that the three phishing detection models with relevant persuasion cues significantly outperform the baseline model by approximately 5% to 20% percent in terms of F-score, thus representing reliable methods for phishing email detection.

Cues, Values and Conflict: Reassessing Evolution Wars Media Persuasion

It has been posited that persuasive cues impart Evolution Wars communications with persuasive force extending beyond the merits of their communicated arguments. Additionally, it has been observed that the array of cues displayed throughout proevolutionist materials is exceeded in both the number and nuance of Darwin-skeptic persuasion techniques. This study reassesses these findings by exploring how persuasive cues in the Evolution Wars are being articulated with reference to the Cultural Cognition Thesis and Moral Foundations Theory. Observations of Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, and the Center for Science and Culture media are reevaluated. These findings are juxtaposed with data pertaining to Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, National Center for Science Education, and BioLogos Foundation broadcasts. The outcomes reveal how values claims and morally charged language are concentrated within the works of antievolutionists and New Atheist media makers, who collectively promote some manner of religion-science conflict.

Distrust, danger, and confidence: A content analysis of the Australian Vaccination-Risks Network Blog.

The Australian Vaccination-risks Network is Australia's most active counter-vaccine lobby group. This study employs a content analysis of the organization's 2012-2019 blog posts, while further considering Australian-specific vaccine contexts. The goal is to identify the persuasion attributes of these counter-vaccine articles, and the ways that the group's media employs persuasive cues when communicating to Australian publics. The project gauges the occurrence rates of message variables associated with the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, including those labeled as the Scarcity Principle, Arousal of Fear, Asking Questions, Source Cues, the Contrast Principle and Negativity Effect, as well as Statistics and Technical Jargon. Three overarching themes collectively exhibited by these message variables are further identified and described as Distrust, Danger, and Confidence. In view of these findings, the study then considers how persuasive cue expression in Australian Vaccination-risks Network blog posts corresponds with Australian vaccine hesitancies and the country's No Jab No Pay/Play policies.

Deconstructing Persuasiveness of Online Hotel Review Platforms

Considering the significant influence of online hotel reviews on both tourism demand and supply side, these may be considered as a successful persuasive tool. Accordingly, it is necessary to investigate the broader context in which reviews are generated and what are the components that contribute to their effectiveness. The main goal of this study was to analyze the communication occurring on hotel review platforms from a social psychological perspective through understanding structure, characteristics, and functions of attitudes expressed in guests' reviews. In addition, it aims to identify how persuasive cues in review responses should be defined. Following this aim, the authors applied multiple case study design and collected data in several stages through document analysis, participant observation, netnography, and interviews with different stakeholders involved in online review management process. Results of the qualitative content analysis showed that, in order to use the full persuasive potential of review platforms, it is necessary for hotel management to define its presence and visibility on these platforms, to conduct in-depth analysis of structure, characteristics, and functions of attitudes expressed in reviews, and to establish a systematic approach towards use of central and peripheral cues in review responses to induce desired cognitive processing of these messages.

Healthy, sweet, brightly colored, and full of vitamins: cognitive and affective persuasive cues of food placements and children’s healthy eating behavior

Research on persuasive cues of food placements in entertainment media targeted at children is still scarce. We investigated whether healthy food placements (i.e., fruit) connected to different persuasive cues (i.e., cognitive, affective, and combined) can enhance children’s (age 6-11 years old) healthy food choice. A pretest (N = 154) confirmed that the stimulus was understandable and appropriate for children. We then conducted our main experiment (N = 191), measuring children’s awareness for positive cognitive and affective cues regarding fruit, fruit evaluation, and fruit choice in response to an audiovisual cartoon. A moderated mediation-analysis revealed that the use of affective cues (i.e., in the affective and the combined condition) increased children’s awareness for the positive affective attributes of fruit, which then led to a more positive evaluation. Furthermore, the moderating role of children’s body mass index and age were investigated. The effectiveness of cognitive cues regarding cue awareness depended on children’s BMI and children’s age. The effectiveness of cognitive cues on fruit choice was also moderated by children’s age. Implications and avenues for promoting healthy products to children are discussed.

Examining the role of narratives in civic crowdfunding: linguistic style and message substance

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how linguistic style and message substance influence persuasion in civic crowdfunding marketplaces in which written narrative pitch become a vital communication to attract private contributions to public goods and services. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), the authors operationalize the linguistic style of the narrative pitch as language power and message substance as issue-relevant argument quality. In this paper, the authors examine how characteristics of both style and message are related to the outcome of civic crowdfunded projects.Design/methodology/approachThe data on civic crowdfunding projects were retrieved from Spacehive, the platform that dedicated mainly to civic projects ranging from community programs, social-oriented enterprises, to infrastructure or facility development. Each of the narrative samples is analyzed using a computerized text analysis package called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to extract the features of the linguistic style and message substance in the narratives. The logistic regression models are estimated to assess the impact of both linguistic style and message substance on crowdfunding decisions.FindingsThe results show that funding outcomes can be improved with psychological language dimensions (i.e. positive affective and perceptual language). However, extensive use of social language does not help project creators to increase their chance of funding performance; but instead, such language reduces the likelihood of project success. Additionally, message substance or issue-relevant information such as money and risk language influences funding outcome.Originality/valueVery few empirical studies investigated the differential effects of language style and message substance on funding performance of crowdfunding campaigns. The authors draw upon the dual process of persuasion as a theoretical base to identify a comprehensive set of linguistic style and message substance and to examine the role of such features in an emerging civic crowdfunding market. This study advances the application of the dual process in ELM by identifying and examining distinct persuasive cues originating from linguistics styles and message contents.

Sensitivity to Ulterior Motives in Retail Settings: The Moderating Role of Dual-Identity versus Sole-Identity Consumers

The current research compares sole-identity versus dualidentity consumers in their responses to different retail persuasion attempts that occur in situations with low versus high ulterior motives. We examine different consumer responses (e.g., interaction time, perceived friendliness, future interaction intentions, and actual purchase behavior). We find that dual-identity consumers (those individuals with sales experience who have both a consumer and agent identity available) tend to automatically activate their agent identity which makes them more likely to take the perspective of the sales agent as compared to sole-identity consumers (individuals without sales experience who only have a consumer identity available). Dual-identity consumers show greater sensitivity to ulterior motives as exhibited by more accurate responses when persuasion cues suggest that ulterior motives are low, but not high. In contrast, sole-identity consumers are insensitive to differing levels of ulterior motives. The current research further demonstrates that perspective-taking can mitigate sole-identity consumers' defensive reactions which can increase their responses to sales agents' persuasion attempts with low ulterior motives.

Does the migraine attack start in the cortex and is the cortex critical in the migraine process?

Migraine is a pure human neurovascular disorder with no reliable corresponding animal model. The cerebral cortex (CC) has long been discussed as a crucial element of its complex mechanism. The present review considers the state of the art of experimental evidence on the involvement of CC in migraine. An ample series of research data points to a role of CC in the migraine process, also at the beginning of the attack, especially in the form with aura. However, in spite of several CC, peculiarities emerged in experimental settings, the enigma on their significance (cause or consequence of the disease?) remains. All in all, we believe that pure clinical observations and reasoning, i.e., its exclusive human nature and the precipitating role of stress, are still the most persuasive cues supporting the CC involvement in migraine.

Instagram and YouTube bloggers promote it, why should I buy? How credibility and parasocial interaction influence purchase intentions

Nowadays social network influencers play an important role in marketing by introducing products to their audience. In this article, we investigate the persuasion cues related to beauty and fashion influencers present on YouTube and Instagram. More precisely, we investigate how the para-social interaction (PSI) the audience creates with the online influencer, along with their perceived credibility, are related to the purchase intention and how they are, in turn, related to the social and physical attractiveness and attitude homophily. We base our research on four beauty influencers popular in France and control our results by the age of the participants and by the influencer. We find that attitude homophily is positively related to PSI but, surprisingly, the physical attractiveness shows negative relationship or no evidence of relationship. Both credibility of the influencers and PSI exhibit significant and positive relationships to purchase intention.

The Influence of Social Media Influencers: Understanding Online Vaping Communities and Parasocial Interaction through the Lens of Taylor’s Six-Segment Strategy Wheel

The purpose of this research is to increase understanding of Taylor’s six-segment strategy wheel (SSSW) by exploring how message strategy makes use of commenters’ parasocial interactions (PSIs) with social media influencers (SMIs). Recent research findings have concluded that younger viewers often consider PSIs/parasocial relationships (PSRs) to be highly similar to their social interactions/relationships. To understand this phenomenon, the research explores the dynamics of the vaping community, because SMIs are a primary means of product information. Vaping companies use SMIs who are known only to the collective group of like-minded peers to create a loyal audience. The present study uses research from the SSSW and PSIs to understand persuasive cues while watching a video featuring an SMI.

The application of Aristotle’s rhetorical theory to the sharing economy: an empirical study of Airbnb

ABSTRACTSharing economy businesses require extensive trust-based communication between users and service providers to facilitate users’ positive persuasion processes. Based on Aristotle’s rhetorical theory, this study identifies three key persuasive cues (credibility, emotional bonding, and accommodation characteristics) and validates their roles in establishing users’ trust in an Airbnb setting. The moderating role of interactivity is further analyzed. Research findings from a survey sample of 171 Airbnb users indicate that persuasive cues are positively associated with trust in Airbnb hosts, which significantly leads to Airbnb brand trust. Interestingly, the moderating role of interactivity is only found in the relationship between emotional bonding and trust in Airbnb hosts. This study contributes to a better understanding of the factors that affect users’ trust building in the sharing economy context, and it offers guidance for platform providers to better operate their businesses by highlighting the important roles of persuasive cues and interactivity in users’ trust-building processes.

Graphical Password Authentication System Based On Persuasive Cued Click-Points

Graphical Password Authentication System Based On Persuasive Cued Click-Points