A Study On The Effect Of Fear Appeal In "Quit Smoking" Advertisements

Featured by the factors of fear, fear appeal advertisements arouse the fear in audience, promoting their attention and interest for the information revealed in the advertisements and thus improving the effectiveness of communication. Fear appeal therefore, is often adapted as an advertising strategy to convince or change the attitudes and behaviors of consumers.As per PSAs, do fear appeal advertisements dedicated to the idea of "quit smoking" have a better spread compared to average ones? Traditional studies compare the audiences’ differences in terms of cognition, memory and attitudes by conducting intension measurement. Visual measurement however, as a means to discover how the audiences view the fear appeal advertisements, has been poorly studied so far.In this dissertation, the technique of eye movement tracking has been utilized to analyze the audiences’eye movement differences when confronted with both fear appeal "quit smoking" advertisements and non-fear appeal "quit smoking" advertisements, together with research methods introduced from traditional advertising psychology, issues such as how male and female subjects view and react fear appeal advertisements, as well as the memory effect will be studied.Through research the following conclusions could be drawn:1.Significant eye movement differences has been observed, which indicates an obvious difference in the subjects’ reactions toward fear appeal images and non-fear appeal images, meaning that threatening information is more easily noticed by individuals.2.The significant difference in eye movement in the area of interest regarding fear appeal "quit smoking" advertisements and non-fear appeal "quit smoking" advertisements can be reflected through eye movement index such as the number of eye movement, gaze fixation time, and when did the first gazing start.4. Compared to memory effect of non-fear appeal "quit smoking" advertisements, the subjects have a better memory for the text of fear appeal "quit smoking" advertisements.5. No sign of correlation between level of fear and subjects’ credibility for the advertisements.6. Certain difference exist between male subjects and female subjects’ eye movement characteristics when reading "quit smoking" advertisements.