Message fatigue beyond the health message context: a replication and further extension of So et al. (2017)

Abstract

Repeated exposure to similar messages may be counterproductive, yet the majority of the extant research tends to neglect this possibility. Addressing this issue, So et al. (2017) conceptualized and operationalized the message fatigue construct within the health message context. We replicate their study in a climate change message context and extend their work by proposing and validating a shortened message fatigue scale. The results of a preregistered study (N = 620) show that the conceptual structure and correlates of message fatigue are well replicated: Climate change message fatigue retains the original factor structure, and it is positively correlated with counterargument and negatively correlated with attention and message elaboration. Moreover, their relationships with message fatigue are shown to be moderated by political ideology in a theoretically expected manner. The shortened message fatigue scale also exhibits adequate psychometric properties, offering a less cumbersome alternative to the original scale.