Lee Stella Juhyun, Liu Jiaying
Department of Media and Communication, Konkuk University.
Department of Communication Studies, University of Georgia.
Health Commun. 2023 May;38(6):1071-1079. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2021.1991638. Epub 2021 Oct 24.
Describing that many people perform a certain behavior has been known to increase people's behavioral intentions. However, the underlying premise is that the behavior must be high in prevalence. The present study examined whether describing low-prevalence behaviors (static norm) and framing low-prevalence behaviors as increasing in popularity across time (dynamic norm) may increase behavioral intentions in the context of getting the flu shot and eating less red meat. In addition, the study aimed to examine whether other behavioral antecedents could moderate the effect of viewing these normative messages. An experiment that randomly assigned participants to view either dynamic norm messages, static norm messages, and no messages (control) was conducted. Results indicated that for the behavior of eating less red meat, viewing a static norm message backfired while viewing a dynamic norm message did not. Moreover, the effect of viewing low-prevalence norm messages was moderated by other behavioral antecedents such as, current and future injunctive norm perceptions and attitude. These findings contribute to the theoretical and practical understanding of utilizing low-prevalence norms for persuasion.
众所周知，描述很多人都在进行某种行为会增强人们的行为意图。然而，其潜在前提是该行为的普遍性必须很高。本研究探讨了描述低普遍性行为（静态规范）以及将低普遍性行为描述为随时间推移而日益流行（动态规范）是否会在接种流感疫苗和少吃红肉的情境中增强行为意图。此外，该研究旨在考察其他行为前因是否会调节观看这些规范性信息的效果。研究进行了一项实验，随机分配参与者观看动态规范信息、静态规范信息或不观看任何信息（对照组）。结果表明，对于少吃红肉的行为，观看静态规范信息产生了适得其反的效果，而观看动态规范信息则没有。此外，观看低普遍性规范信息的效果受到其他行为前因的调节，如当前和未来的指令性规范认知以及态度。这些发现有助于从理论和实践层面理解如何利用低普遍性规范进行说服。
