"It Happened to Me and It's Serious": Conditional Indirect Effects of Infection Severity Narrated in Testimonial Tweets on COVID-19 Prevention.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2023;
20:6254. [PMID:
37444105 PMCID:
PMC10341756 DOI:
10.3390/ijerph20136254]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2023] [Revised: 06/16/2023] [Accepted: 06/28/2023] [Indexed: 07/15/2023]
Abstract
The health crisis caused by COVID-19 resulted in societal breakdowns around the world. Our research is based on determining which features of testimonial messages are most relevant in increasing persuasive impact. An online experiment with a 2 (severity infection narrative: low vs. high) × 2 (infection target: narrative's protagonist vs. protagonist's father) between-subject factorial design was carried out. Young people between 18 and 28 years (N = 278) were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions, where they were asked to read a narrative message in the form of a Twitter thread describing a COVID-19 infection (with mild or severe symptoms) that affected either the protagonist of the message (a 23-year-old young person) or their father. After reading the narrative message, the mediating and dependent variables were evaluated. A message describing a severe COVID-19 infection affecting their protagonist to increase the perception of personal risk increased the persuasive impact through an increase in cognitive elaboration and a reduction in reactance. Our study highlights that creating persuasive messages based on social media targeted at young people that describe a careless behavior resulting in a severe COVID-19 infection can be an appropriate strategy for designing prevention campaigns.
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