Public service announcements (PSAs) are key staples for broadcasters in fulfilling their Federal Communications Commission–mandated public interest mission, and the familiarity of the PSA format has helped motivate broadcaster attempts to monetize these short, community-focused messages. But relatively few studies have rigorously assessed the impact of PSAs; to date, there have been no randomized experiments gauging PSAs aired on radio stations with different programming formats. To fill this gap, we report the results of three field-based experiments randomizing the airdates of PSAs on three separate broadcast radio stations. Results suggest PSAs have significant, but short-lived, effects on audience behavior. This finding has implications for organization sponsorship and broadcaster use of PSAs as well as researcher approaches to studying these spots through randomized field experiments.

公共服务公告（PSA）是广播公司履行其联邦通信委员会（Federal Communications Commission）规定的公共利益使命的关键要素，对PSA格式的熟悉有助于促使广播公司尝试通过这些简短的，以社区为中心的消息获利。但是，很少有研究严格评估PSA的影响。迄今为止，还没有任何随机实验来评估在具有不同节目格式的广播电台播出的PSA。为了填补这一空白，我们报告了三个基于现场的实验的结果，这些实验将PSA的播出时间随机分配到三个独立的广播电台上。结果表明，公益广告对受众行为具有重大但短暂的影响。