The Role Played by Self-Focused Emotional Ad Appeals on Intentions to Call a Domestic Violence Helpline: Exploring Guilt, Hope, and the Independent Self-Construal in an Indian Context

Background: Domestic violence against women is a serious health and social issue, with victims found across the world. Utilizing the collective help of bystanders has become an increasingly important step toward mitigating abuse. Advertising campaigns have shed light on the seriousness of domestic violence, however, messages promoting bystander intervention are comparatively less. Focus: The primary focus of this exploratory study is to test the ability of public service announcements (PSAs) to inspire behavior change, i.e. to call a helpline. Emotional ad appeals have the potential to motivate apathetic bystanders to intervene, however, their effectiveness can depend on one’s self-view. Using self-construal and congruity theory, the current study examined the impact of self-focused emotional appeals, namely guilt (negative) and hope (positive), on varying levels of self-construals (independent vs. interdependent). Hypotheses: Three key hypotheses were tested: Self-focused emotional appeals using guilt and hope will be more persuasive on an independent self-construal than an interdependent self-construal (H1). Individuals with a low independent self-construal will find a guilt appeal to be more persuasive than a hope appeal (H2a). Individuals with a high independent self-construal will find a hope appeal to be more persuasive than a guilt appeal (H2b). Importance to the Social Marketing Field: Domestic violence in India is an ongoing issue and PSAs have the ability to motivate behavior change. From the perspective of social marketing and strategy, this exploratory study will shed light on which pairing of self-construal and emotions (guilt or hope) in messages can bring about desired pro-social intentions. Method: A single-factor experimental design was implemented with participants (n = 72) recruited from major metros in India. Results: Findings from a regression analysis revealed that guilt and hope were persuasive only on the independent self-construal. The next step was to explore the impact of guilt and hope within the independent self-construal (low vs. high). A simple slope test revealed that hope (vs. guilt) significantly strengthened the intentions to call the advertised helpline for those with low independent self-construal, while both hope and guilt were found to be equally effective on the high independent self-construal. Recommendations for Research and Practice: The findings add to the growing literature on domestic violence prevention messages by emphasizing the importance of emotional persuasion through cultural congruence. By taking varying levels of independent self-construal into consideration, social marketers can accordingly utilize emotional ad appeals like guilt and hope to help bystanders develop positive intentions to intervene. Limitations: Despite the significant findings, this exploratory study focused on the impact of two emotional ad appeals (guilt and hope) on a small sample of participants from a single country, India.