Abstract

Social marketers and health advertisers often use statistical health information to craft customized messages for specific consumer segments. However, the composition of these segments can vary greatly, inherently resulting in different base rate percentages about the same health issue (e.g. ‘51.9% of all COVID 19-related deaths in the U.S. occurred among Caucasians’ vs. ‘16.6% of all COVID 19-related deaths in the U.S. occurred among Hispanics’) that can potentially lead to different responses from consumers. Therefore, this research examines how individuals process, and respond to, manipulated base rates. Study 1 demonstrates that higher (vs. lower) base rates increase individuals’ healthy behavioural intentions by elevating their risk perceptions. Study 2 uncovers a more complex serial process underlying the impact of base rates on intentions to follow recommended behaviours in health messages. Importantly, we demonstrate a critical effect reversal such that higher base rates have an unintended negative impact on individuals’ compliance intentions when involvement is lower (vs. higher). Overall, our findings show how the use of base rates in health messages can serve as a ‘double-edged sword’.

摘要

社交营销人员和健康广告商经常使用统计健康信息为特定的消费者群体制作定制信息。然而，这些部分的组成可能有很大差异，这必然导致关于同一健康问题的不同基本比率百分比（例如，“美国所有与 COVID 19 相关的死亡中有 51.9% 发生在白种人中”与“所有 COVID 中的 16.6%美国有 19 起相关死亡事件发生在西班牙裔中），这可能导致消费者的不同反应。因此，本研究考察了个人如何处理和应对被操纵的基准利率。研究 1 表明，较高（相对于较低）的基准利率通过提升个人的风险认知来提高个人的健康行为意图。研究 2 揭示了一个更复杂的系列过程，该过程是基础费率对遵循健康信息中推荐行为的意图的影响的基础。重要的是，我们证明了一个临界效应逆转，即较高的基准利率会产生意想不到的效果当参与度较低（相对于较高）时，会对个人的合规意图产生负面影响。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，在健康信息中使用基本费率可以作为一把“双刃剑”。