The After-Effects of Fear-Inducing Public Service Announcements

Abstract

Messages using fear appeals often appear in social marketing, to promote causes such as smoking cessation, healthcare and driving accident prevention. Fear appeals can enhance the effectiveness of such communications, but they also may have unintended side effects. This study investigates the effect of fear-inducing public service announcements on evaluations of subsequent commercials in a commercial break. In two laboratory experiments, the authors measured participants’ evaluations of advertisements using a program analyzer. In line with affective priming theory, the results showed that fear-inducing public service announcements can negatively affect evaluations of subsequent commercials.