The effect of celebrity endorser attributes, issue involvement and perceived social support on attitude towards organ donation registration

Abstract

Celebrity endorsement has been extensively used in both profit and non-profit marketing. However, the effectiveness of the marketing strategy in the non-profit context is not clear. In generating a positive attitude towards organ donation registration, health and science literature have suggested the use of celebrity endorser. In addition, issue involvement is also assumed to yield a favourable attitude towards organ donation. Furthermore, the influence of perceived social support has been greatly discussed in the organ donation literature. Despite these phenomena discussed in the literature, the role of the three variables on attitude towards organ donation registration is ambiguous. Thus, this paper is aimed to investigate the effect of celebrity endorser, issue involvement and perceived social support towards attitude. Data from 466 university students were gathered using purposive sampling. IBM SPSS Statistic 23 and SmartPLS 3.0 were utilized in data analysis. The findings from this paper showed that likeability, trustworthiness and issue involvement generate a positive attitude towards organ donation registration. Implications of this research to both practical and future research are also discussed. This paper hopes to increase researchers’ interest to further investigate and contribute to the literature of organ donation in the context of social marketing.