Assessing the Efficacy of Radio Public Service Announcements: Results From Three Field Experiments

Abstract

Public service announcements (PSAs) are key staples for broadcasters in fulfilling their Federal Communications Commission–mandated public interest mission, and the familiarity of the PSA format has helped motivate broadcaster attempts to monetize these short, community-focused messages. But relatively few studies have rigorously assessed the impact of PSAs; to date, there have been no randomized experiments gauging PSAs aired on radio stations with different programming formats. To fill this gap, we report the results of three field-based experiments randomizing the airdates of PSAs on three separate broadcast radio stations. Results suggest PSAs have significant, but short-lived, effects on audience behavior. This finding has implications for organization sponsorship and broadcaster use of PSAs as well as researcher approaches to studying these spots through randomized field experiments.