The effectiveness of positively framed messages in social marketing

Led by: Dr Fiona Harris (The Open University Business School)

Background

Although smoking rates have declined dramatically over the past twenty years due to a range of anti-smoking initiatives, the percentage of smokers in Great Britain has remained static at 21% since 2007. The current economic climate is unlikely to be conducive to smoking cessation, because financial stress has repeatedly been reported to be associated with a lower likelihood of quitting smoking. New research is needed now using innovative social marketing campaigns to address the small, but significant number of remaining smokers who may be persuaded to quit.

This project is funded by the Academy of Marketing Research Initiative (European Journal of Marketing Award for Research in Marketing).

Aims and objectives

1. To investigate whether positively-framed anti-smoking messages can make smokers more receptive to considering changing their behaviour.
2. To provide an empirical test of the Broaden-and-Build theory of positive emotion (Fredrickson, 1998) and its application in a social marketing context.
3. To identify effective and ethical ways of framing messages in facilitating change to help improve social marketing theory and practice.

Methods

A literature review will be conducted to evaluate the success with which different types of positively-framed social marketing messages have been used in social marketing contexts. This will be followed by an experiment assessing the impact of a selection of positively-framed quit smoking messages and positive emotion on smokers’ receptivity to considering changing their behaviour.

Research team

• Dr Fiona Harris (The Open University Business School)
• Dr Paul Harrison (Deakin Graduate School of Business,Deakin University)

Research centre: Responsibility and Regulation (R&R)