 How allusion enhances consumer response to hope appeals in health messagingPia A. Albinsson, Bruce A. Huhmann and Bidisha Burman Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 191, issue C Abstract: While fear appeals often appear in health-oriented Public Service Announcements (PSAs), three experiments demonstrate that a positive appeal, hope, can be effectively used in PSAs to promote healthy eating when combined with an allusion, a type of figurative language. Specifically, Study 1 uses eye-tracking to establish that allusion moderates hope’s encouragement of visual attention and engagement. Study 2′s experiment illustrates how allusion moderates hope’s influence on message outcomes. Study 3 tests whether self-efficacy mediates the relationships between hope and allusion on message outcomes using Hayes PROCESS modeling. Results support self-efficacy’s mediation of the hope-allusion interaction on message response outcomes. One contribution is the investigation of a multimodal allusion incorporating both visual and verbal elements and its ability to enhance message effectiveness. This study also advances the theoretical understanding of the use of positive emotional appeals and the power of self-efficacy to account for their effects in health promotion PSAs. Keywords: Figurative Language; Allusion; Positive emotional appeals; Hope; Self-efficacy; Health promotion PSAs; Eye-tracking (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:191:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325000608 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115237 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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