Exploring the Impact of Fear Appeals on the Prevention of Shoplifting

T. de Bock, Iris Vermeir (), M. Pandelaere () and P. van Kenhove
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Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: The present study investigates the effectiveness of fear appeals in preventing shoplifting among adolescents. We study the effects of type of punishment (social disapproval versus fines), probability of getting caught when shoplifting and severity of the punishment. Results show that social punishment messages should stress severe levels of social disapproval when the chance of getting caught is low. When social disapproval messages imply a high probability of apprehension, the severity of social rejection makes no difference for the shoplifting intentions. Finally, messages focusing on fines should depict large instead of small fines, irrespective of the communicated probability of getting caught

Keywords: demography prediction; demographic targeting; web advertising; Random Forests; web user profiling; clickstream analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2010-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-mic
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:10/668

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