Communication strategies for promoting sports participation for health: an examination of goal-framing effects in South Korea

ABSTRACT The South Korean government has implemented a public campaign promoting sports participation for health since 2005. However, research on the communication strategies of this campaign is limited. This study examined message strategies to promote sports participation for health through two experiments. A convenient sample comprising individuals aged 18–55 years was recruited from a large public university in South Korea. The results of experiment 1 support the basic tenet of goal-framing effects that gain-framed messages are more effective than loss-framed messages in promoting sports participation, which is a typical preventive health behavior. In experiment 2, gain-framed messages for sports participation were further classified into two types: easy but small-gain (ESG) messages and difficult but large-gain (DLG) messages. Experiment 2 examined whether the persuasive impact of the two types of gain-framed messages varies according to individuals’ past sports experience levels (i.e. active vs. occasional sports participants). As predicted, ESG was more persuasive than DLG for occasional sports participants. However, the persuasive effects of ESG and DLG did not significantly differ among active sports participants. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.