Do aspirational role models inspire or backfire? Perceived similarity mediates the effect of role models on minority students’ college choices
Evelyn C. Allen and
Brian Collisson
Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 2020, vol. 30, issue 2, 221-238
Abstract:
Drawing from psychological theory, an aspirational role model within college marketing materials may cause prospective students to be willing to make similar enrollment and academic choices if the role model is perceived as similar to themselves. Therefore, we predicted that prospective, minority students exposed to a role model of the same, rather than different, ethnicity will be more willing to enroll in the same institution and make similar academic choices. Further, we predicted perceived similarity may mediate the effect of role model ethnicity on academic choices. To experimentally test our predictions, we presented 151 prospective, minority students (49% Black, 32.5% Hispanic, 18.5% Asian) with alumni profiles that varied in regard to ethnicity (same ethnicity, White) and accomplishment (modest, extreme). Prospective students then rated perceived similarity with the alumni and willingness to make similar academic choices. A series of analyses confirmed our predictions. Prospective, minority students were more willing to make similar choices when presented with a role model of the same, rather than different, ethnicity. As predicted, perceived similarity mediated the effect of role model ethnicity on academic choices. Interestingly, accomplishments of the alumni did not affect students’ choices. Implications for recruiting students of color in higher education are discussed.
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08841241.2020.1723780 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jmkthe:v:30:y:2020:i:2:p:221-238
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/WMHE20
DOI: 10.1080/08841241.2020.1723780
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Marketing for Higher Education is currently edited by Dr Jane Hemsley-Brown, Anthony Lowrie and Dr. Thomas Hayes
More articles in Journal of Marketing for Higher Education from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().