Background

More and more females are diagnosed with and die of cancers. Acquiring cancer-related information and enriching one’s knowledge of cancers are important to cancer prevention and treatment. Effective online health headlines are indispensable to encouraging the reading of the hyperlinked health articles, especially those on daunting topics such as cancers.

Objective

This study aims to reveal how message framing, i.e., gain- or loss-framing, influences female users’ selection of cancer-related health headlines at two levels, i.e., attention and behavior.

Methods

An eye-tracking experiment was conducted to capture female participants’ attention and clicking behavior in response to cancer-related headlines manipulated in terms of message framing. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S- O-R) framework was introduced to develop the research model that also took approach/avoidance motivation into account as moderator.

Results

Compared with loss-framed headlines, gain-framed ones attracted more and longer fixations (β = .09, p < .01; β = .12, p < .01) as well as more clicks (exp(B) = 1.76, p < .001), and they additionally evoked a higher level of pleasure (β = .50, p = .00) yet a lower level of arousal (β=-.16, p = .00). Arousal partially mediated the relationship between message framing and headline selection (β = .16, p = .00; β = .16, p = .00; exp(B) = 1.8, p = .00). The participants high in approach motivation devoted more attention to gain-framed headlines than to loss-framed ones (F(1,1333) = 15.74, p < .001; F(1,1333) = 31.94, p < .001).

Conclusion

Gain-framing is a preferred technique over loss-framing for online health information providers to create effective headlines of cancer-related information. Using gain-framed headlines helps alleviate cancer information avoidance and enrich people’s knowledge of fatal diseases.

中文翻译：

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信息成帧对女性用户在线健康标题选择的影响：对方法/避免动机的控制

背景

越来越多的女性被诊断出癌症并死于癌症。获取与癌症有关的信息并丰富癌症知识对于癌症的预防和治疗很重要。有效的在线健康头条对于鼓励阅读超链接的健康文章，尤其是那些令人生畏的话题（如癌症）的阅读是必不可少的。

目的

这项研究旨在揭示消息成帧（即获利或损失成帧）如何在两个级别（即注意力和行为）上影响女性使用者对癌症相关健康标题的选择。

方法

进行了一项眼动追踪实验，以捕捉女性参与者的注意力和点击行为，以应对在信息框架中操纵的与癌症相关的头条新闻。引入了刺激-有机体-反应（S-OR）框架来开发研究模型，该模型还考虑了方法/避免动机作为主持人。

结果

与亏损框头条相比，增益框头条吸引了更多和更长的注视（β= .09，p <.01;β= .12，p <.01）以及更多点击（exp（B）= 1.76， p <.001），并且他们还引起了较高的愉悦感（β= .50，p = .00）而较低的唤醒感（β= -.16，p = .00）。Arousal部分介导了消息框架与标题选择之间的关系（β= .16，p = .00；β= .16，p = .00； exp（B）= 1.8，p = .00）。进场动机高的参与者将更多的关注焦点放在了增益框架的标题上，而不是损失框架的标题上（F（1,1333）= 15.74，p <.001； F（1,1333）= 31.94，p <.001）。

结论

对于在线健康信息提供者而言，相对于丢失帧而言，增益成帧是一种首选技术，它可以创建癌症相关信息的有效标题。使用带有标题框的标题有助于减轻对癌症信息的回避，并丰富人们对致命疾病的了解。