Investigating the Role of Consumer Personality Orientations and Use of Threat in Social Cause Advertising during Covid 19

Abstract The purpose of the study is to understand how threat as a message appeal in social cause advertising impacts consumer behavior. The study extends the protection motivation theory by involving threat as a message appeal and agency and communal orientation as possible moderators between social cause messages, consumers’ behavior, and intention to follow social distancing under the ambit of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The study considered 2 Social cause Ads VizPromotional Social Cause (PSC) vs Partake-in-our-cause (PIOC) X 2 Orientation (Agency vs Communal) X Message Appeal (With Threat vs Without Threat) factorial experimental design. The study manipulated the PSC versus PIOC message appeals by including threats and understanding the impact on both the agency and communal-orientated people. Two pretests followed by a pilot test were conducted before the main experiment. A factorial design experiment reveals that people with agency and communal orientation do get impacted if a threat is involved in the advertisement, while it follows social distancing norms.