Prosocial Campaigns Research Articles

Prosocial Campaigns With Virtual Influencers: Stories, Messages, and Beyond

This research addresses the rising prominence of virtual influencers (VIs) by asking a crucial question: “How can we effectively use virtual influencers to not only reach audiences but also deeply resonate with them, particularly in promoting socially responsible behaviors?” We propose employing narrative messaging to enhance virtual influencers’ effectiveness in delivering prosocial messages. In a 2 (VI appearance: human-like vs. anime-like) × 2 (message style: narrative vs. non-narrative) between-subjects design, 320 Gen-Z and younger Millennials were exposed to simulated Instagram posts by a VI discussing cyberbullying. Results indicated that human-like virtual influencers led to higher supporting intent and message credibility, especially in the non-narrative condition. However, in the narrative message condition, the advantage of human-like appearance diminished. These findings highlight the significant role of VI appearance in prosocial message reception and the conditional influence of message style. Actionable insights for practitioners leveraging VIs in social marketing strategies are discussed.

Virtual voices for real change: The efficacy of virtual humans in pro-environmental social marketing for mitigating misinformation about climate change

Academics have focused their research on the rise of non-human entities, particularly virtual humans. To assess the effectiveness of virtual humans in influencing individual behavior through campaigns, we conducted two separate online experiments involving different participant groups: university students (N = 167) and U.S. adults (N = 320). We compared individuals’ responses to video-type pro-environmental campaigns featuring a virtual or actual human scientist as the central figure who provides testimonials about their individual efforts to prevent misinformation about climate change. The results indicate that an actual human protagonist evoked a stronger sense of identification compared to a virtual human counterpart. Nevertheless, we also observed that virtual humans can evoke empathy for the characters, leading individuals to perceive them as living entities who can have emotions. The insights gleaned from this study have the potential to shape the creation of virtual human content in various domains, including pro-social campaigns and marketing communications.

Cross-cultural investigation from nine countries on the associations of antisocial traits and the WHO's containment measures for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Personality traits play a role in prosocial behavior in relation to containment measures intended to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. Empirical findings indicated that individuals high in socially aversive traits such as callousness are less compliant with containment measures. This study aimed to add cross-cultural data on the relationship between antisocial traits and adherence to COVID-19 containment measures. The sample consisted of 4,538 adults recruited by convenience in nine countries (Australia, Brazil, England, Iraq, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States). Statistical analyses indicated two latent profiles from our sample, empathic and antisocial, and six COVID-19 containment-measure-related factors using measures covering antisocial traits (PID-5), empathy (ACME), global personality pathology (LPFS-BF), and COVID-19 behaviors and beliefs. Through MANCOVA, the antisocial profile consistently showed less compliance and concern about the COVID-19 containment measures, even when controlling for demographics and local pandemic covariables. The network analysis indicated a lack of empathy and callousness as crucial traits of the predisposition to non-compliant behavior. In elaborating on prosocial campaigns in community emergencies, our cross-cultural findings would need to consider personality traits that focus on antisociality, anticipating similar associations and potential impacts in future disease outbreaks.

Is kindness invaluable? The impact of benefit and cost on prosocial behavior intentions

PurposeIn the modern increasingly competitive milieu of cause marketing activities, both profit and nonprofit organizations expect their advocation of prosocial programs to gain the support of target customers. Previous research shows the effect from adding participant's personal attributes or social influence factors. This study considers the effects of benefit incentives and cost/reward influences to enhance prosocial behaviors.Design/methodology/approachThree between-subject experiments were conducted and SPSS Statistics ANOVA was employed to analyze the experimental results.FindingsRewarding time delays and prosocial efforts have no significant impact on the relationship between other-benefit incentives and willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors, but do significantly impact the self-benefit incentives condition. However, the negative effect of self-benefit condition can be mitigated by high rewards.Research limitations/implicationsSince prosocial campaigns proposed by organizations in this study include both profit and nonprofit organizations, perhaps two category organization types should be attentively classified to evaluate the effects.Practical implicationsUnder social marketing campaigns with self-benefit incentives conditions, the empirical findings of this study show that profit and nonprofit organizations can provide higher reward values to mitigate the adverse effects of high participating costs.Social implicationsSocial marketing campaigns with other-benefit incentives are less affected by high participating costs and highlight the value of altruism.Originality/valueThis study provides valuable suggestions for both profit and nonprofit organizations to use self-benefit/other-benefit incentives under cost related factors influence to encourage customers' prosocial behaviors.

Prosocial native advertising on social media: effects of ad-context congruence, ad position and ad type

PurposeSocial media have become an increasingly important venue for prosocial campaigns. Competing for the public’s attention in the digital space is an ongoing challenge. This study aims to test the influence of ad-context congruence, ad position and ad type (i.e. public service advertising [PSA] vs cause-related brand [CRB] advertising) on the effectiveness of prosocial native advertising on social media.Design/methodology/approachTwo experiments were conducted on different social media platforms (i.e. Twitter and Instagram) with varied prosocial issues (i.e. healthy eating and environmental sustainability).FindingsExperiment 1 indicated that the congruence between prosocial native ads and social media feeds elicited greater ad involvement and a more favorable ad attitude, regardless of ad position. Experiment 2 revealed that such an impact was contingent on whether the prosocial native ad was a public service ad or a CRB ad. The positive influence of ad-context congruence was pronounced among public service ads but was not observed among CRB ads. Perceived ad involvement mediated the interaction effects between ad-context congruence and ad type on ad attitude and behavioral intention.Originality/valueThe study extends ad-context congruence research to the context of prosocial native advertising on social media. Moreover, it identifies ad type as a boundary condition for the congruence effects and reveals that increased ad involvement is the mechanism underlying the positive effect of congruent PSA.

Practicing entertainment for social change in the United States: comparing the influences of U.S.-based documentary storytelling and print campaign resources in a univision prosocial media campaign

ABSTRACT In the United States, Hispanic children experience dramatically different educational outcomes compared to other racial and ethnic groups. Educational disparities begin at the earliest phases of formal education; left unaddressed, challenges can persist. To address this, Univision, the most-watched Spanish-language network in the United States, launched Camino al Éxito (Road to Success), a multimedia prosocial storytelling campaign designed to reach parents with helpful messages about key risk transitions through the K-12 education life cycle. Following narrative engagement theory, this study sought to understand the role of narrative-based information utilized in this entertainment-based prosocial campaign by examining U.S. Hispanic parents’ (N = 153) responses to a short TV documentary and a printed campaign resource document. Those exposed to the documentary showed significantly higher posttest mean levels of knowledge than the print condition. Results suggest that documentary storytelling can be effectively employed in prosocial entertainment media campaigns for social change.

Accountability moderates the effects of egoistic and altruistic appeals in prosocial messages

PurposeThis paper aims to clarify the relationship between consumer accountability and responses to egoistic and altruistic appeals. It proposes that when consumers’ relationships with others are heightened in the form of accountability, different prosocial message appeals become effective. The study expands the understanding of how marketing may enhance the efficacy of prosocial campaign messages.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilized three online experimental studies to test hypotheses across different population samples and health product categories. Self-benefit and other-benefit appeals were tested to decrease meat consumption (Study 1), increase vaccination intent (Study 2) and purchase oxybenzone-free sunscreen (Study 3). Results provide converging evidence for the proposed interaction between appeal type and accountability.FindingsWhen consumers believe their choices will be known or discussed with others, they are more persuaded by other-benefit or altruistic appeals. Contrary to some existing research, Study 3 found that when public accountability was heightened, hybrid appeals were less effective than a solely altruistic appeal in generating purchase intent, digital engagement and attitude change, even controlling for social desirability.Research limitations/implicationsPublic accountability was manipulated only in an online setting, and future studies should replicate with greater ecological validity. Results inform how scholars, brands and organizations should approach message efficacy in prosocial campaigns, particularly when an individual’s relationship with others may become salient.Practical implicationsThe paper includes implications for the development and deployment of various organizational strategies such as changing the appeal depending on where a message will be viewed by consumers. Importantly for digital campaigns, maximum digital engagement arises from an altruistic appeal in a public context.Originality/valueThis paper fulfills an identified need to understand how organizations can successfully encourage prosocial consumer behavior, as well as bridges literature gaps on accountability and appeal efficacy.

The Effects of Processing Fluency in Prosocial Campaigns: Effort for Self-Benefit Produces Unpleasant Feelings.

This study investigates how consumers’ intentions related to prosocial campaigns were accompanied by metacognitive experiences. Two studies examined how the relationship between appeal type (self-benefit vs. social benefit) and the level of processing fluency (easy vs. difficult) influenced attitudes toward prosocial campaigns. The findings revealed that individuals who were manipulated to find self-benefit appeal displayed less favorable attitudes toward disfluent prosocial campaigns than those who were manipulated to find social benefit appeal. The underlying mechanism of this result was that the extra effort invested to understand prosocial campaigns with difficult processing fluency produced unpleasant feelings.

Pure donation or hybrid donation crowdfunding

PurposeDespite the growing research exploring the possibility and feasibility of financing socially oriented projects through crowdfunding, relatively little research examines which crowdfunding model is better to serve such purpose. The purpose of this paper is to offer novel insights to mitigate this research gap.Design/methodology/approachA unique data set collected from the largest Chinese crowdfunding platform is used to test the hypotheses. To solve the perceived self-selection problem, the propensity score matching method is adopted in this paper. Based on this approach, the results of similar prosocial campaigns in two different models (pure donation and hybrid donation) are compared.FindingsThe empirical results show that the hybrid donation model is negatively associated with the status of success and the extent of success of prosocial campaigns. Specifically, compared to the pure donation model, hybrid donation model leads to a lower probability of success, fewer contributors, a lower funding amount and a lower completion ratio.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to a relatively understudied theme in crowdfunding, namely, donations. It does so by introducing the concepts of pure vs hybrid donation models and investigates the model selection problem in financing social projects through crowdfunding based on cognitive evaluation theory.

The Easier the Better: How Processing Fluency Influences Self-Efficacy and Behavioral Intention in Pro-Social Campaign Advertising

This study examines how processing fluency influences people’s behavioral intention to perform a pro-social behavior. In particular, we predict that high processing fluency enhances self-efficacy perception which, in turn, increases behavioral intention to participate in a pro-social campaign. Study 1 tested the proposed effect in the context of a pro-environmental campaign. Results showed that individual’s subjective feeling of processing fluency affects the degree of self-efficacy and intention to engage in recycling behavior. Study 2 replicated study 1 in the context of organ donation. In addition, we manipulated the degree of conceptual fluency by differently pairing message framing (gain vs. loss) and background color (blue vs. red). As predicted, participants exposed to campaign advertising with conceptually matching framing-color pairs (blue—gain framing and red—loss framing) expressed a greater level of self-efficacy than those who were exposed to mismatched pairs. In addition, self-efficacy mediated the influence of the color–framing match on the intention to donate organs. Our research contributes to the existing literature by identifying critical drivers that promote actions toward pro-social campaigns. It also provides useful guidelines for marketers who design and implement pro-social campaign communications.

Age differences in responsiveness to shocking prosocial campaigns

PurposeThis paper aims to study age differences in responsiveness to shocking prosocial campaigns. It specifically investigates the differences between seniors and young adults regarding the persuasive effect of emotional charity campaigns, the intensity of negative emotions and empathy elicited, the affect-based persuasive process leading to the ad effectiveness and the role of perceived self-efficacy.Design/methodology/approachTwo studies are conducted on seniors (n1 = 173; n2 = 118) and young adults (n1 = 170; n2 = 123) exposed to appeals for “Action against Hunger” incorporating various levels of emotional content.FindingsThe results indicate that seniors are more receptive to emotional campaigns but only for higher emotional ads and only regarding intention to donate. Young adults report lower levels of empathy, and findings do not suggest major age differences in the reported negative emotions after exposure to low or high emotional appeals. The affect-based persuasion differs; young adults are particularly influenced by negative emotions, whereas the persuasive effect on the elderly stems from an empathetic reaction. Self-efficacy moderates the effect of negative emotions only among older participants.Practical implicationsSocial marketers are advised to use vivid and realistic stimuli to reach young people and develop these appeals in social media. For an older target audience, however, marketers are advised to use creative components and media support designed to foster personalisation and proximity.Originality/valueThis study provides a better understanding of age-related effects on emotional persuasion, and addresses the specificity of prosocial appeals involving responsiveness to the suffering of others.

Cause-related marketing: uncovering the myth

In accordance with companies' efforts to position themselves as socially responsible firms, the application of Cause–Related Marketing (CRM) has been growing as a helpful marketing tool. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of significant prior studies in understanding what factors influence the success of such prosocial marketing campaigns and their impacts on consumers' purchase intentions. This research attempts to investigate the influence of perceived cause importance, cause proximity, cause–brand fit and consumers' involvement in CRM on consumers' purchasing intention. Findings of the study indicate the positive and significant impact of cause importance, cause proximity, and cause–brand fit on consumers' purchase intentions, while consumers' involvement in CRM was not found to have any significant role to play. Study limitations and implications have also been outlined in the paper.