Testing Social Media Advertisements for Animal Advocacy

We used the Mercy For Animals social media outreach budget to systematically estimate the efficacy of different advertisements on different demographic groups. Based on the click-through rates (CTR: the percentage of impressions resulting in clicks on ads), we observe:1. Animal-based advertisements are more than twice as effective as other types of advertisement, achieving a CTR over 3% compared to just 1.1-1.5% for environment, health, and social adverts.2. Females and older users were more likely to click adverts compared to males and younger users, respectively.3. Specific messages may outperform others within these broad themes. We find that pigs were the most effective animal advert (vs. cows, chickens, and fish), climate change was the most effective environment advert (vs. land use, water use, and deforestation), and chronic disease was the most effective health message (vs. obesity, pathogen contamination, and antibiotic contamination).The findings can be used to inform social media strategy for Mercy For Animals and the broader animal protection movement.

Reactance to Social Authority in a Sugar Reduction Informational Video: Web-Based Randomized Controlled Trial of 4013 Participants

Background Short and animated story-based (SAS) videos can be an effective strategy for promoting health messages. However, health promotion strategies often motivate the rejection of health messages, a phenomenon known as reactance. In this study, we examine whether the child narrator of a SAS video (perceived as nonthreatening, with low social authority) minimizes reactance to a health message about the consumption of added sugars. Objective This study aims to determine whether our SAS intervention video attenuates reactance to the sugar message when compared with a content placebo video (a health message about sunscreen) and a placebo video (a nonhealth message about earthquakes) and determine if the child narrator is more effective at reducing reactance to the sugar message when compared with the mother narrator (equivalent social authority to target audience) or family physician narrator (high social authority) of the same SAS video. Methods This is a web-based randomized controlled trial comparing an intervention video about sugar reduction narrated by a child, the child’s mother, or the family physician with a content placebo video about sunscreen use and a placebo video about earthquakes. The primary end points are differences in the antecedents to reactance (proneness to reactance, threat level of the message), its components (anger and negative cognition), and outcomes (source appraisal and attitude). We performed analysis of variance on data collected (N=4013) from participants aged 18 to 59 years who speak English and reside in the United Kingdom. Results Between December 9 and December 11, 2020, we recruited 38.62% (1550/4013) men, 60.85% (2442/4013) women, and 0.52% (21/4013) others for our study. We found a strong causal relationship between the persuasiveness of the content promoted by the videos and the components of reactance. Compared with the placebo (mean 1.56, SD 0.63) and content placebo (mean 1.76, SD 0.69) videos, the intervention videos (mean 1.99, SD 0.83) aroused higher levels of reactance to the message content (P<.001). We found no evidence that the child narrator (mean 1.99, SD 0.87) attenuated reactance to the sugar reduction message when compared with the physician (mean 1.95, SD 0.79; P=.77) and mother (mean 2.03, SD 0.83; P=.93). In addition, the physician was perceived as more qualified, reliable, and having more expertise than the child (P<.001) and mother (P<.001) narrators. Conclusions Although children may be perceived as nonthreatening messengers, we found no evidence that a child narrator attenuated reactance to a SAS video about sugar consumption when compared with a physician. Furthermore, our intervention videos, with well-intended goals toward audience health awareness, aroused higher levels of reactance when compared with the placebo videos. Our results highlight the challenges in developing effective interventions to promote persuasive health messages. Trial Registration German Clinical Trials Registry DRKS00022340; https://tinyurl.com/mr8dfena International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) RR2-10.2196/25343

EXPRESS: Tainted by Stigma: The Interplay of Stigma and Moral Identity in Health Persuasion

The current research examines the interactive effect of consumers’ moral identity and risk factor stigma on health message effectiveness. We theorize that engaging in advocated health behaviors has moral associations; however, a stigmatized risk factor in a message “taints” the morality of the advocated health behavior. Thus, consumers with high (vs. low) moral identity are more likely to comply with health messages when risk factor stigma is low, and this positive moral identity effect is undermined when risk factor stigma is high. We test stigma’s threat to moral identity by measuring defensive processing (studies 1 and 2) and the attenuating effect of self-affirmation on the negative effect of stigma (studies 3 and 4). We apply the stigma-by-association principle to develop and test a messaging intervention (study 5). Our studies suggest that, depending on whether a health message contains stigmatized risk factors, marketers could employ a combination of tactics such as activating moral identity, offering self-affirming message frames, and/or highlighting low stigma risk factors to bolster message effectiveness.

Relationship between Depressive Symptomatology, Physical Activity, and Response to Online Health Messages

Although physical activity interventions are efficacious for decreasing depressive symptomatology severity, there are several barriers to accessing treatment, supporting the need for intervention delivery in more accessible and cost-effective modes. However, individuals may respond defensively to health messages if perceiving them as threatening, and thereby fail to change behaviors. Although online, health-based interventions are effective in leading to behavior change, limited research has been conducted to identify ways in which people respond differently to online health messages. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate how individuals differ in their acceptance and interpretation of online health-related messages as threatening, as well as their desire to improve health behaviors based on their current depressive and physical activity levels. A total of 197 participants (MAGE = 36.17 years, SDAGE = 12.52 years) drawn from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) were asked to read a message regarding the importance of physical activity for health. Their defensiveness and behavior change intentionality were evaluated in relation to physical activity and depressive symptomatology. Individuals who engaged in less physical activity were more accepting of the health message, more likely to find the article threatening, agree that less exercise was related to negative health issues, and agree they should increase their physical activity. Individuals with higher self-ratings of depressive symptomatology were less accepting of the health message, found the article more threatening, and believed it to be less important to increase their physical activity levels. However, neither physical activity nor depression symptom severity were related to whether an individual would actually increase their physical activity. There was no statistically significant correlation between physical activity and depression. Explanations for these findings are provided.

Influence of African Indigenous language media in COVID-19 digital health messaging

COVID-19 pandemic era has further energized humans to consider their health more than before, especially in the digital age when they experience a deluge of health information. This study, therefore, examined COVID-19 digital sources, health message types and how the use of African Indigenous language media enhanced people’s utilization of coronavirus health messages. Using an online questionnaire and in-depth interview data collection methods, respondents received preventive COVID-19 health messages on social distancing and personal hygiene from mostly interactive digital sources, which hardly infused African Indigenous language media in the health message. However, African Indigenous languages motivated respondents to utilize COVID-19 messages, though people still spread COVID-19 fake news through Indigenous media. Nonetheless, integrating African Indigenous language media into digital health communication can confer credibility on information sources. Still, there is a need to fight the use of digital media to spread fake news.

COVID-19 Pandemic: The Urgent Dental Hub experience from a primary care perspective

In response to the nationwide lockdown on 23 March 2020 in the UK, urgent dental hubs (UDHs) were established in the community to provide emergency dental care. Consecutive referrals to a primary care UDH were prospectively analysed over a one-month period, from 18 May 2020 to 18 June 2020. Of 400 referrals received, the most common were in relation to pain (87%). In 63% neither a radiograph nor photograph was provided with the referral. Seventy percent of patients were telephone triaged within 24 hours of receipt of referral. Fifty-three percent of referrals were accepted for face-to-face treatment, of which 69% were treated by extraction. Of rejected referrals (n=179; 45%), 79% were due to symptoms having settled or being manageable by the time of triage. A small number of referrals were redirected for specialist care. Referrals that were accepted were more likely to have been prescribed antibiotics and less likely to have been referred by the general dental practitioner (GDP) they regularly saw (p <0.01). Patients that were older and those that identified themselves as not having a regular GDP were less likely to have been referred to an UDH. The quality of referrals was poor and there may be a role for virtual consultations moving forwards. We found pre-referral antimicrobial prescriptions were high and a confused public health message may have been sent.

The Power and Peril of Precise vs. Round Health Message Interventions to Increase Stair Use

Taking the stairs vs. an elevator generate benefits for the individual by increasing overall physical activity, health, and wellbeing. In the present paper, we report two pre-registered field intervention studies that examine how health message interventions can motivate individuals to change their behavior. We empirically contrasted opposing predictions from the literature as to whether numerically round (60.00%) or precise (61.87%) health messages are more effective in causing people to use the stairs over taking the elevator. Both interventions were compared to a control condition (no-health message). Contrary to our hypotheses and extant findings, both intervention studies did not produce a significant positive effect of the interventions relative to the control condition. In recent years such null findings have received increasingly more appreciation, particularly in the light of evident downsides of file-drawered studies. We discuss a number of moderating factors that may determine when and why nudging interventions are (in-) effective (e.g., a priori behavioral prevalence, pre-established habits, ceiling effects, and building infrastructure), as well as limitations and avenues for future research.