Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) has carried out Public Service Advertisement (PSA) campaigns since 1981 for 30 years. PSAs are a type of communication with the purpose of having the public recognize social issues or problems not at a commercial level ...
Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) has carried out Public Service Advertisement (PSA) campaigns since 1981 for 30 years. PSAs are a type of communication with the purpose of having the public recognize social issues or problems not at a commercial level but at a public level and of inducing changes of their consciousness, and as society gets more complicated and interests become conflicted between people and individualistic tendency increases, the roles of the advertisements also have become greater.
Precedent studies on PSAs can be divided into ones analyzing and examining existing PSAs and ones on the messages and consumer variables to promote the communication effects of PSAs. A lot of studies on PSAs have studied the effect of the appeal methods of messages (rational/emotional, positive/negative, individual/social, and threat/horror/humor, etc.) and consumers' individualistic characteristics (involvement, self-monitoring, cognitive needs, perceived differences, and optimistic bias, etc.); however, they do not show any consistency among the variables forming the intention of behaviors.
Thus, this study attempted to draw out suggestions for the effective appeal methods of PSAs by examining the precedent studies on the effects of commercials and PSAs studied at home and abroad and reviewing the factors on people's attitudes toward the advertisements based on existing theory through empirical studies. The purpose of this study is to verify differences in their attitudes toward the ads according to the appeal methods of the messages among the various independent variables affecting their attitudes, to examine what impacts the characteristics of the consumers have on their attitudes toward the ads according to the appel methods, and then to help develop the messages of PSAs suiting the characteristics of the consumers. For this purpose, the appeal types of the messages were framed broadly into ‘gain’ and ‘loss’ and to measure their attitudes toward the ads consisting of ‘cognitive, affective and behavioral component'. It measured in ‘preference of the ads’, ‘preference of ads' message' for the level of ads affective component. and ‘ecoawareness’, ‘behavior intentions for environmental conservation’ were measured for the level of behaviors component. Optimism, consumer characteristic used as moderator variable was measured with Scheier, Carver & Bridge's ‘LOT-R(Revised Life Orientation test).’ Two ads selected through advance survey were inquired into on-line and off-line using self-administered questionnaires for males and females at their ages of 20s and 30s residing in Seoul and Gyeonggi from November 6 to 10, 2010 for 5 days. 116 copies excluding insincere ones out of the collected questionnaires went through Data Coding, and using Statistic Package for Social Science (SPSS) ver 15.0, reliability and validity were tested, and analyses such as frequency analysis, factor analysis, t-test and bivariate analysis were carried out.
The results of the study are summarized as follows:
First, there was no difference in their attitudes toward the ads according to the appeal types of the messages unlike the suggestions of the existing precedent studies.
Second, the hypothesis that the appeal types of the messages would affect their attitudes toward the ads according to optimism, a consumers' characteristic has been supported. Optimistic persons evaluated higher the message appeal of gain than the other one. and pessimistic persons' evaluation was opposite.
Third, for the attitudes toward the ads according to the consumers' characteristics, optimistic consumers' environmental consciousness and behavior intention for environmental conservation turned out to be higher than pessimistic consumers'.
Based on prediction theory, a hypothesis that the message of losses would form a more preferential attitudes toward the ads was established; however, only results reflecting to optimism, individuals' personality trait were obtained. However, this study had significance for try to study optimism, a consumers' characteristic to the attitudes toward the ads. and further, it suggests that the consumers' characteristics should be studied in more various ways for effective advertising communication.