ABSTRACT
How does the consumer emotionally process and react to messaging intended to prompt responsible behavior toward the environment? This study provided a psychophysiological method to analyze how certain combinations of elements in an advertisement generate different types of response. Psychophysiology is the study of the relationship between the mind and the body. Specifically, the authors investigated whether a message could activate the consumer's defensive motivational system (resulting in inaction) or the appetitive motivational system (inspiring positive physical action). The findings offer evidence as to what type of message is better at provoking emotion so as to increase the potential of such campaigns to elicit positive changes in behavior.
MANAGEMENT SLANT
Differences in the way people process emotions depend on the combination of elements used in the design of “green” advertising messages.
Messages designed with positive valence (pleasurable outcome) and a “final-gain frame” (emphasis on benefit versus cost) are more effective than those designed with negative valence and “final-loss frame” when trying to encourage environmentally friendly actions on the part of the consumer.
The findings open a line of research to assist the creation of more effective advertising campaigns by offering evidence about what type of stimulation is the most effective to provoke emotion that inspires real behavior changes.
INTRODUCTION
Advertising about environmental sustainability can be a useful tool for governments and other organizations to encourage citizens to assume more responsibility for their surroundings and society (Stern, 2011). “Green” advertisements include ecological, environmental sustainability or nature-friendly messages that target the needs and desires of environmentally concerned stakeholders (Zinkhan and Carlson, 1995). The use of social-marketing tools for developing advertising campaigns that encourage socially desirable changes in individual behavior, in fact, is quite common (Kotler and Lee, 2008).
The goal of the current study was to contribute to existing research about how green advertising campaigns should be designed and evaluated to ensure effectiveness (Montoro et al., 2006; Leonidou et al., 2011). As a tool to help marketers design effective messaging, the current authors created a psychophysiological method for analyzing the interaction of the human mind and body in response to green advertising campaigns.
The current method encourages designers of advertising messages—and, in particular, green campaigns that promote environmental sustainability—to consider the elements that comprise the message. A combination of elements directly can lead to a particular effect, allowing the consumer to process the information more effectively (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). Furthermore, some combinations are more effective than others in promoting specific behaviors, including environmentally friendly habits (Spence and Pidgeon, 2010).
Scholars have devoted considerable research to the role played by message framing in the persuasion process. Specifically, two types of message elements—valence and end-state—have received greater attention because they show high degrees of persuasiveness.
Valence is defined as the degree of pleasure or displeasure resulting from an advertisement (Vieillard et al., 2008). It is important to decide whether to use elements of either positive or negative valence in the design of advertisements so as to determine how consumers react to them.
“End-state” is defined as the emphasis on either the benefit or the cost of engaging in actions that reduce environmental problems (Hulme, 2008). In advertising messages that promote “greener” behavior, the “gain frame” reveals the positive impact of acting in an ecologically responsible manner. In contrast, a “loss frame” in a message shows the negative and dangerous consequences that could occur when not respecting the environment.
With respect to positive or negative valence, the level of pleasantness of an advertisement can indicate that it plays a major role in the formation of attitude (MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch, 1986). Positive framing seems to be appropriate in the promotion of environmentally friendly behavior (Lai and Kou, 2007).
The authors of the current study sought to fill what they viewed as a gap in existing research: How—and which type of—emotion, whether positive or negative, is generated effectively in response to the elements within messages about environmental responsibility?
LITERATURE REVIEW
There is no shortage of scholarly work on how to persuade consumers to act through advertising. The end-state of a message—its gain frame or loss frame—reinforces the consequence of taking action and answers the consumer's question, “What's in it for me?”
The Prospect Theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) suggests that the effectiveness of either end-state of the message depends on whether the option is considered to be of high or low risk (Rothman et al., 1993).
Other theories have compared the relative persuasiveness of gain frames versus loss frames in advertising on subjects related to questions such as
health (Rothman and Salovery, 1997);
social marketing (Fine, 1990; Helmig and Thaler, 2010); and
green advertising (Ellen, Wiener, and Cobb-Walgren, 1991; Spence and Pidgeon, 2010).
On the whole, the empirical evidence has shown that “gain-framed” messages are only marginally more effective than loss-framed messages in persuading the consumer to act in a more responsible way. The current authors believed it was necessary to further identify the possible effects of the relationship between the message's end-state element (i.e., framing) and its effectiveness.
Despite numerous related studies, little research has been devoted to analyzing the cognitive and emotional processing generated by the different elements and combination of elements of a message. In the field of green advertising, the effects generated by the combination of different elements of a message remain unknown (e.g. Cheng, Woon, and Lynes, 2011).
Furthermore, to the current authors' knowledge, none of the experiments investigating the effectiveness of different valences or end-states has specified whether the elements of the message remained constant. Hence, their results cannot be considered conclusive. For this reason, some scholars have stressed the need to classify green advertisements according to their individual elements—an adjustment made to facilitate future clarification, analysis, interpretation, and comparison of results (Leonidou et al., 2011).
These differences have been explored in a broader context, comparing, for example, messages with different combinations of valence and end-state (Yi and Baumgartner, 2008). A meta-analysis concluded that 17 of 145 studies published between 1965 and 2004 focused on the differences between gain-framed and loss-framed advertisements (O'Keefe and Jensen, 2006). To the current authors' knowledge, however, this combined differentiation has not been explored sufficiently in the area of green advertising.
The Scientific Study of Emotion
A common research theme involves evaluating advertising effectiveness by identifying the attitude that a message generates. This attitude must be analyzed in terms of its cognitive and affective components (Vakratsas and Ambler, 1999). Most of the attention, thus far, has been directed at the effectiveness of a message from the cognitive perspective, leaving the affective (or emotional) dimension insufficiently explored (Kolandai-Matchett, 2009) and relevant for further analysis (Kennedy et al., 2009).
Defining, measuring, and analyzing emotions is complex (Öhmann and Birbaumer, 1993), which, the authors of the current study believe, is a key reason for the lack of analysis on the question of emotions generated by “green” messages.
Among the general findings on emotions, all emotional reactions share three characteristics (Lang, 1995):
directionality (tendency toward approach or avoidance);
intensity (higher or lower energy requirement); and
control (continuation or interruption of the behavioral sequence).
The same characteristics make up the three major factors that shape the affective world (Batra and Ray, 1986; Holbrook and Batra, 1987):
valence (pleasant-unpleasant);
arousal (excited-calm) or the degree of activation; and
dominance (controlling-controlled).
On the basis of these factors, the affective responses to advertising have been classified as follows: (Batra and Ray, 1986; Holbrook and Batra, 1987)
Valence is the element of a message that has the greatest influence on the hierarchy of emotions. That hierarchy is a function related to two primary motivational systems in the brain: defensive and appetitive (Lang, 1995):
The defense system is activated in situations involving threat, with behavior tending toward withdrawal, escape, and attack.
The appetitive system is activated in situations of survival, that is, sustenance or nurturance, with a basic behavior of caregiving (Bradley et al., 2001).
Arousal corresponds to the metabolic and neural activation or intensity of either the appetitive or defensive system. Whether it be appetitive or defensive, the dominant motivational system modulates all behavior, whether it be simple reflexes or complex cognitive processes (Bradley et al., 2001).
Dominance is the least portrayed in studies of emotion, although it has been related to valence (Bradley and Lang, 1994). Specifically, a positive correlation was found between valence and dominance: the greater the positive valence, the greater the control and dominance.
The Role of Psychophysiology
Variance in the emotional meaning of a given message consistently has been explained by two predominant factors: valence and arousal (Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum, 1957; Smith and Ellsworth, 1985). For this reason, the current authors decided to focus on these two factors.
Moreover, with respect to the difficulty of measuring and analyzing emotional processing, the authors considered that emotions are inherent and involuntary. In certain situations, emotional reactions cannot be avoided, a factor that renders essential the study of emotions from the psychophysiological perspective (Poels and Dewitte, 2006).
Psychophysiology is the study of the relationship between the mind and the body in a bidirectional way: how the impact of external factors generates responses in one (mind/body) affecting the other. In the study of consumer behavior, psychophysiology examines the impact of psychological states on physiological responses.
Psychophysiological techniques in scientific research yield information that cannot be obtained through verbal or self-reports (Micu and Plummer, 2010). These techniques “provide an impartial and confidential measure of an individual's reaction to a stimulus” in that they analyze autonomic, involuntary reactions (Stewart and Furse, 1982).
The current study used established psychophysiological measures to record the emotional reactions of consumers to green advertising stimuli, including autonomic and somatic responses (skin conductance, facial electromyography, and heart rate) (Hopkins and Fletcher, 1994; Ohme et al., 2009; Peacock, Purvis, and Hazlett, 2011). Although the interpretations of earlier psychophysiological tests depend on the context of each case, the principal interpretations gleaned from earlier research are applicable for the present study:
Skin-conductance response (SC) measures the electrical conductance of the skin according to the amount of moisture (sweat) that correlates positively with the intensity of an emotional activation caused by stimuli. It is a reliable, valid means to measure the level of excitement or arousal (Bradley, Cuthbert, and Lang, 2001). An increase in skin conductance, therefore, can be interpreted as a physiological activation and a function of preparing energy for the body (Bradley et al., 1990).
Some studies have confirmed these findings in response to a variety of stimuli, such as images (Simons et al., 1999) or film fragments (Hubert and Jong-Meyer, 1991). In marketing research, electrodermal activation also has been applied widely to measure levels of arousal (Bolls, Lang, and Potter, 2001). The technique further has been validated as a means to analyze an emotional state produced by advertising stimuli (Ohme et al., 2009; Peacock et al., 2011).
Facial electromyography (EMG) measures the electrical activity of certain facial muscles (i.e., the corrugator [“frown”] and zygomatic [“smile”] muscles; See Figure 1). EMG has been applied widely as an indicator of the affective valence of stimuli (Hopkins and Fletcher, 1994).
Broadly, the processing of unpleasant stimuli is recorded by an increase in corrugator muscle activity, whereas pleasant stimuli provoke an increase in activity of the zygomatic muscle (Lang et al., 1993). These measurements, therefore, track the two different motivational systems (appetitive and defensive). The technique is capable of recording responses to very weak stimuli, even when no changes in facial display are observed by the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Cacioppo et al., 1986). FACS is a standard used for categorizing the physical description of emotions by means of a system that measures facial expressions.
Furthermore, when subjects are instructed to inhibit emotional expressions, facial EMG still can register responses (Cacioppo, Bush, and Tassinary, 1992).
In fields of advertising and marketing research, studies applying SC and EMG have been used to analyze emotion generated by radio (Bolls et al., 2001) and television advertisements (Hazlett and Hazlett, 1999; Ohme et al., 2009; Peacock et al., 2011). The techniques also have been used for developing software (Hazlett and Benedek, 2007) and Web advertising (Sundar and Kalyanaraman, 2004).
Nonetheless, no study, to the authors' knowledge, has applied these psychophysiological methods to analyze emotions produced by stimuli in the framework of green advertising.
Heart rate (HR) measure is used to analyze emotions generated by viewing stimuli (Bolls, Muehling, and Yoon, 2003). Various analyses of this type have shown that neuronal circuits in the brain activate the appetitive and defensive systems connected with the physiological systems related to attention and action.
More specifically, it has been demonstrated that the decelerative components of HR are associated with increases in attention (Bolls et al., 2001). This pattern occurs in reaction to viewing either negative or positive stimuli (Kreibig et al., 2007).
Deceleration is more pronounced in response to stimuli perceived as having a negative valence because negative messages require more cognitive processing (Bradley et al., 2001). In addition, a first heart acceleration following a decelerative pattern has been interpreted as the activation of the appetitive motivational system (Bradley, Greenwald, and Hamm, 1993).
The current study explored the advantages of applying psychophysiological techniques to identify emotional patterns generated in response to different types of environmental advertising.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The principal objective of the current research was to determine the way emotions are processed when responding to different green advertising messages designed with a combination of elements (valence and end-state). The authors believe the study is a first step toward establishing a combination of elements that are most effective for leading individuals toward environmental action. It thereby serves to establish guidelines to produce maximum impact on the design of advertising messages (Vakratsas and Amber, 1999; Leigh, Zinkhan, and Swaminathan, 2006; Helmig and Thaler, 2010).
To address this objective, the current study used psychophysiological techniques that, the authors believe, have not been applied in the field of green advertising. Given the lack of previous research, this study adopted an exploratory approach and posed the following research questions:
RQ1: Which emotional responses are generated when viewing stimuli with differentiated valences and end-states in the framework of green advertising?
RQ2: What specific physiological responses qualify as emotional responses to green advertising?
METHODOLOGY
Experimental Design: Creation of Stimuli
The research team designed an experiment using three advertising messages:
In two of the messages, valence and end-state elements were combined;
a third message was neutral; and
the remaining elements identified were constant.
Specific elements were included in each advertisement according to earlier recommendations (Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth, 1998; See Table 1).
The advertisements contained 20 images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) to provide the desired valence (Moltó et al., 1999; Vila et al., 2001; Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert, 2008). This system offers quantitative data on the three major factors of emotion (valence, arousal, and dominance) using the psychometric scale construction method—Self-Assessment Manikin (Lang, 1980) with a 9-point Likert scale.
To ensure a more rigorous method, the current experiment controlled the valence (different for the three messages) and the arousal (identical for the three messages) of the 20 images that comprised each of the stimuli:
For the Message Positive/Gain (PGM)—a positive valence and gain end-state—the images selected related to the environment had a rating of more than six points (pleasant) on the IAPS scale. In the case of the PGM, the images belonged to affective categories of “nature,” “family,” and “food.”
For the Message Negative/Loss (NLM)—a negative valence and loss end-state—the images selected were rated at less than four points (unpleasant). The message with a negative valence and a loss end-state corresponded to images of the affective categories (i.e., “pollution,” “calamities,” “contamination,” and “mistreated animals”).
Music also was included in messages so as to resemble as closely as possible real environmental advertisements without sacrificing methodological rigor. Musical themes were selected according to the desired valence from the International Affective Musical Fragments System (Diaz-Uceda, 2009), a system that assigns a rating to musical samples according to the three dimensions of emotion.
In addition, the authors performed a qualitative study on the images with a neutral message to ensure that the images deemed neutral in the valence dimension by the IAPS (between four and six points) were, in fact, perceived as neutral in the context of environmental problems.
Finally, to enhance the compared end-states, the images were accompanied by an off-screen voice. For the neutral message, the text was selected from the qualitative study after analyzing comments by the participants with CAQDAS Nudis Vivo (version 9) software.
Sample Characteristics
The final sample consisted of 104 individuals. Larger samples in this type of psychophysiological study are not necessary, as the goal is not to deduce universal extrapolations regarding the general population. Instead, the goal is to bring to light underlying mechanisms or processes that help explain behavioral phenomena.
To reflect demographic diversity, the final sample comprised subjects of different gender, age, education, occupation, and income level. It was divided into three groups; each group viewed one of the three experimental messages. The sub-samples were balanced in terms of the previous socio-demographic characteristics, so each of the three experimental groups had similar proportions.
Experimental Session
The experimental session, in two phases, lasted an average of 35 minutes:
In the pre-experimental phase, the participant was informed about the test and asked to sign a consent form.
The psychophysiological test was performed individually in an experimental room. It began with a seven-minute session of adaptation (recording only the last five minutes) in which the participant simply had to remain calm and keep his or her eyes open. Next, the participant viewed one of the three messages (140 seconds), each preceded by a tone indicating it was about to begin. Finally, after the viewing, the participant went through a recovery period lasting the same length of time as the message.
Experimental Monitoring
A Biopac polygraph MP150 recorded the psychophysiological variables. This machine detected signals from the corrugator (frown) and zygomatic (smile) muscle (See Figure 1) and electrocardiograms and skin-conductance response by means of 10 electrodes impregnated with an electrolyte gel1 to record the electrical activity of the skin. AcqKnowledge software (version 3.8.1) recorded and processed the signals from a Biopac amplifier. The software E-Prime application suite (version 2) was utilized to receive the stimuli according to the signals received through the serial port.
DATA ANALYSIS
All psychophysiological variables were recorded at 1,000 samples per second. For their analysis, three programs were designed using Matlab software. The program KARDIA (version 2.7), a Matlab toolbox (Perakakis et al., 2010), was used to measure the heart rate. All statistical analyses were performed with SPSS software (version 15.0).
From the moment of the appearance of the first image, differential scores were calculated for skin conductance and HR. These were taken every second; the average response value was eliminated from the last minute of the baseline measurement.
The 140 variables resulting from each psychophysiological test represented the direct response of each subject, allowing for visualization of changes that occurred with respect to a normal state, devoid of stimulus. These were incorporated as dependent variables in an analysis of variance with repeated measures and with a 3 × (20 × 7) design.
The analyses incorporated one intergroup factor corresponding to the experimental group. The two intra-subject factors corresponded to trials (the number of images comprising each experimental message), and seconds (the length of each trial; See Table 2).
The following transformations were made for the analysis of the facial-muscle activity:
To facilitate the analysis of the electromyogram, the two channels recording the zygomatic (smile) and corrugator (frown) muscle responses were transformed, generating one integrated channel for each after the absolute values were calculated. Subsequently, a low-pass filter was applied so as to maintain the amplitude of the signal without producing rapid cyclic fluctuations.
To analyze them simultaneously, the data were transformed into standardized scores.
In sum, the analyses were based on the 140 data items corresponding to the new standardized variables from the record of each of the muscles, corresponding to each second that the experimental stimuli lasted, and beginning with the appearance
To conclude the analysis of the EMG facial-muscle measurements, an analysis of both measurements was carried out by a 3 × (2 × 20 × 7) design, to form one inter-group factor (experimental group) and three intra-subject factors (corrugator-zygomatic, trials, and seconds; See Table 2).
RESULTS
Psychophysiological Responses to Positive And Negative Messaging
Results of the tests showed differences in psychophysiological responses to the stimuli used. In the section that follows, the authors describe the scientific results obtained through the skin-conductance response and then show the results from the facial-muscle measurements.
The analyses obtained differentiated results for each of the three psychophysiological measurements (skin-conductance response, EMG, and HR). Significant differences of skin-conductance response were found in the intersection of the “seconds” factor with the “experimental group” factor (F = 2,962, p = 0.034).
The participants who viewed the PGM and those who viewed the NLM showed higher levels of skin-conductance responses than those who viewed the Neutral Message (See Figure 2).
The results of the electromyography of the facial muscles revealed great differences for the intra-subjects factor called “corrugator-zygomatic” (F = 66,043, p = 0.000).
Significant differences also were observed for the “corrugator-zygomatic” factor in combination with the “experimental group” (F = 3,423, p = 0.037).
The greatest differences between the two muscles were found in the group viewing the NLM, due to intense activation of the corrugator (frown) and the inhibition of the zygomatic (smile). This was relevant because both measurements are opposite. Zygomatic muscle is indicative of a positive valence of the stimuli, whereas the corrugators measurement is indicative of negative valence.
Interesting to note is that, in the case of the neutral group, the zygomatic (smile) muscle showed an attenuated response, whereas the corrugator (frown) showed a response close to zero. Similar results were found for the group that viewed the PGM, although there was less zygomatic muscle inhibition than for the group that viewed the Neutral Message (NM; See Figure 3). These results indicated that the PGM, more so than the NM, was processed with positive valence.
Similarly, significant differences were observed in the
interaction “corrugator-zygomatic × seconds × experimental group” (F = 2.204, p = 0.016);
interaction “corrugator-zygomatic × trials × experimental group” (F = 2.942, p = 0.000); and
interaction of all the factors included in the analysis (F = 1.290, p = 0.037).
Regardless of the message viewed, the activity of the corrugator and zygomatic muscles differed, especially for those viewing the NLM, indicating a differential process of the message in terms of valence. This group showed a pattern of opposite activity, with an intensification of the corrugator and an increased inhibition of the zygomatic. This behavior was observed both throughout the different trials and throughout the 7-second trials (See Figure 4).
Frowns at Pollution
The results of the experiment are in line with earlier findings in that the images related to pollution (the category used for messages with a negative valence and loss end-state) were among those that produced greater activity of the corrugator (frown) muscle (Bradley et al., 2001). Images from the nature category, on the contrary, were found to induce less zygomatic (smile) response. The remaining messages did not produce noteworthy effects on the corrugator, as the measures remained around baseline.
Finally, the heart rate provided more complete information regarding the response to the experimental messages. It revealed significant effects in the intersection of the factor “trials” with that of the “experimental group” (F = 1,705, p = 0.035).
Compared to the other groups, however, those who viewed the NLM revealed a more decelerative pattern, with a more pronounced initial deceleration. This decelerative pattern was the least pronounced for the group that viewed the NM, whereas the group viewing the PGM showed an intermediate decelerative pattern—performance that fell between the patterns of the other two groups.
These results are in line with the findings of similar research (Bradley et al., 2001) during the viewing of IAPS images without putting the images in an environmental risk context. Additionally, the message produced an accelerative pattern that exceeded the baseline starting at trial 12, a tendency that was not observed in the other messages (See Figure 5).
CONCLUSIONS
Emotional response is a significant variable that influences the behavior-change process, and emotional and visual elements enhance preference (Stern and Resnik, 1991) because they make people feel responsible for developing appropriate behavior from a social standpoint (Passyn and Sujan, 2006).
The difficulty of measuring emotions, however, has made the exploration of the effectiveness of advertising messages from an affective or emotional dimension almost nonexistent (Kolandai-Matchett, 2009).
The current research was designed to address these issues. It used psychophysiological techniques to analyze the emotion produced in response to different advertising messages designed with a combination of differentiated elements (valence and end-state) in the field of green advertising. Specifically, skin conductance has been considered a reliable and valid measure of the excitation or arousal produced by the stimuli (Bradley et al., 1990). This led the current authors to address their first research question:
RQ1: Which emotional responses are generated when viewing stimuli with differentiated valences and end-states in the framework of green advertising?
The results obtained from the analyses of skin-conductance response demonstrated that individuals who viewed the Message Positive/Gain (PGM) and those who viewed the Message Negative/Loss (NLM) underwent a physiological activation linked to a more intense emotion (Bradley et al., 1990), as compared to those viewing the NM.
According to this result, both messages (PGM and NLM) could have an influence on the affective dimension of a person's attitude toward advertising (Ray and Batra, 1983) and on his or her pro-environmental attitudes.
Addressing their second research question—
RQ2: What specific physiological responses could we use to qualify the emotional responses to green advertising?—
the authors of the current paper knew that psychophysiological techniques make it feasible to analyze information processing, attention, emotion, and excitation (Ravaja, 2004), giving even better (i.e., more objective and impartial) information than self-report techniques, which frequently are used in the marketing research (Paulhus, 2002) through the predominant use of questionnaires.
To the authors' knowledge, no study has used such psychophysiological measures to analyze the emotional processing caused by stimuli in the context of green advertising. To go a step further, they used other physiological measurements, including facial EMG—an indicator of the affective valence of the stimuli (Hopkins and Fletcher, 1994)—and HR—used to analyze the emotional and attention process generated by viewing stimuli (Bolls, Muehling, and Yoon, 2003). The current study revealed the following:
Facial-Muscle Activity: Findings showed differentiated behavior depending on the message. This difference was more pronounced for those who viewed the NLM, in which an opposing pattern was observed in the two muscles, producing an increasingly intense activation in the corrugator and an increasingly intense inhibition in the zygomatic. Thus, the results of the electrical activity of the facial musculature confirmed the activation of the defensive motivational system for the NLM.
Zygomatic muscle (smile) activity: Although significant differences were observed in the zygomatic muscle, depending on the message viewed, the muscle tended toward inhibition, not activation. Thus, the function of the zygomatic muscle did not lead to the identification of any message as an activator of the appetitive motivational system. It did appear, nonetheless, that the PGM frame tended to be perceived as the most pleasant.
Corrugator muscle (frown) activity: Among the participants who viewed the NLM, the high electrical activity observed in the corrugator muscle—along with the inhibition in the zygomatic muscle—definitely indicated that the message activated the defensive motivational system and that the intensity of the activation response was identified by the electrical activity of the skin. Regarding the PGM, the slight inhibition observed in the zygomatic muscle prevented researchers from identifying the activation of any motivational system. Therefore, in this case, it was necessary to explore other psychophysiological measures.
Heart Rate (HR): The conclusions from the analysis of HR patterns were that all the experimental messages were marked by a decelerative pattern. The most pronounced occurred in the group viewing the NLM; the least pronounced was in the group that viewed the NM.
The first heart deceleration has been interpreted in relation to the identification of attention processes and the activation of motivational systems (appetitive or defensive) (Bradley et al., 2001). Specifically, this first deceleration has been interpreted as an attention process. Therefore, and in light of the results, both the PGM and the NLM showed a higher attention pattern than that generated by the NM, with the NLM gaining the most attention.
With regard to the interpretation of HR in terms of valence, the authors of the current paper wanted to identify the type of emotional reaction when different stimuli were viewed (Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert, 1998; Bolls et al., 2001) and the motivational system that was activated (defensive, appetitive, or both):
Reaction to NLM showed a mainly decelerative HR pattern indicative of the activation of the defensive motivational system. This result suggested there was an activation of a defense response in the body, similar to the immobility or “freezing” of animals when facing danger (Bradley et al., 2001).
This pronounced decelerative pattern was followed by a slight accelerative pattern that, according to the Defense Cascade Model (Bradley and Lang, 2000; Lang et al., 2000), is indicative of a physiological activation that prepares the body to adopt a conduct of avoidance.
The PGM generated an HR pattern similar to that identified when viewing images containing a pleasant content (Bradley et al., 2001). The initial deceleration was much less pronounced than that produced by the NLM.
Although the pattern was very similar to that observed when viewing pleasant images, it was somewhat more accelerated. Interestingly, a peak surpassing even the baseline occurred at the end of the message.
These data indicated that PGM produced the activation of the appetitive motivational system. In consequence, although it appeared that the stimuli used for the PGM did not produce the activation of the zygomatic muscle, the HR did indicate the activation of the appetitive motivational system and, therefore, the preparation of the body for a possible active-approach response.
IMPLICATIONS
Psychophysiology, Emotions, and Persuasive Messaging
On the basis of the current study's results, the PGM was determined to be the most appropriate formula of advertisement to encourage environmentally friendly actions by the consumer because it achieves one of the main objectives of advertising: persuasion. Further research, nonetheless, is required to confirm these findings.
Moreover, it was observed that images from the IAPS, in the context of the environment, provoked emotional processing different from that viewed out of context. The differences of emotional patterns mainly were found for the PGM, as seen through different skin electrical-conductance patterns and heart rate (HR) patterns.
In short, the intensity of the emotional reactions to the images in the context of the current study was greater than those obtained in other studies without any contextualization (Bradley et al., 2001). In the current study, the stimuli were IASP images accompanied by music and an off-screen voice to contextualize the images into the environmental issue, thus generating greater appetitive motivational system activation.
LIMITATIONS AND RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS
This study contributes to scientific research on green advertising. Future research should focus on methods that further improve the understanding of emotional processing. Indeed, more work is needed in studying the different combinations of both valence and end-state elements in the development of messages included in green advertising campaigns.
This understanding can establish guidelines on how to best design green advertising to achieve maximum impact. The goal: to change consumption patterns to protect the environment, in accordance with earlier findings (e.g., Helmig and Thaler, 2010).
Moreover, the understanding of emotional processing, as articulated in the current study, will aid in interpreting future results about attitude toward advertisements, attitude toward environmental behaviors, and the intention to perform ecological behaviors and explain adopted pro-environmental behaviors.
Specifically, the current study contributes to research on how advertising messages should be designed (Kolandai-Matchett, 2009) as it provides a scientific explanation for why the PGM seems to be more effective (Lai and Kou, 2007; Spence and Pidgeon, 2010).
Furthermore, the current findings open a line of research to design more effective advertising campaigns by offering evidence related to what type of stimulation is the most effective in provoking emotion that inspires changes in real behavior. In addition to improving efficiency in developing social marketing campaigns, the results allow improved measurement of results of these campaigns.
Finally, this study offers new methods for analyzing the effectiveness of social communication. Its methodology could be applied to other areas of research where social intervention also is required. It is applicable to issues such as addictions, eating disorders, disease transmission, domestic violence, and solidarity taxes. In fact, these findings are relevant to
governments, in the formulation of policies;
the media, in their understanding of the influence of how green messages are conveyed;
companies and organizations, in their efforts to develop effective business strategies; and
educational systems, in their development of relevant literature and materials.
All of these parties have an important role to play in encouraging more sustainable individual behavior.
With regard to the study's limitations, it should be noted that the stimuli (IAPS images) have a high symbolic content that may distance them from the characteristics of real advertisements. Despite this limitation, the authors of the current study chose these images because other types of images were not psychometrically calibrated, reducing methodological rigor. Furthermore, these messages combined three important factors:
images,
music, and
an off-screen voice.
It was not possible, therefore, to conclude decisively whether the findings were due to the effect of the emotion generated jointly by all three elements or whether they were due to a primary effect caused by an individual element. Therefore, research on this topic should continue so as to determine the effect that each factor may have on the final emotion.
Future research also should consider
other peripheral reflexes (e.g., the motor startle reflex—the measurement of blink and its activation that indicates negative valence—or the post-auricular reflex—located behind the ear and activated with positive stimuli);
cognitive aspects, such as attention; and
the central measures (electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging), which are related to emotional and cognitive processes.
These considerations—combined with the measures presented in this study—would lead to a better understanding of the emotional processing generated when viewing actual green advertisements.
About the Authors
Myriam Martínez-Fiestas is an assistant research professor of marketing at ESAN, Graduate School of Business (Santiago de Surco, Peru). Her main research interests are psychophysiology, emotions, neuromarketing, social marketing, and consumer behavior. Her work has been published in Service Industries Journal and The International Journal of Management Science and Information Technology, among other publications. She also has consulted for various corporate and government research projects.
María Isabel Viedma del Jesus is an assistant professor at the University of Granada (Spain) department of marketing and market research. Her main research interests are in the fields of psychophysiology, emotions, neuromarketing, social marketing, consumer behavior, and bibliometric studies. Her research has appeared in such journals as Psychophysiology, International Journal of Psychophysiology, Psicothema, Tobacco Control, Quality & Quantity, and Scientometrics.
Juan Sánchez-Fernández is a lecturer in marketing and market research at the University of Granada (Spain). His research interests are social marketing, neuromarketing, bibliometric studies, and Web surveys. His papers have been published in Quality & Quantity, Housing Studies, Online Information Review, Expert Systems with Applications, The Services Industrial Journal, Journal of Economic Psychology, Computers in Human Behavior, among other publications. He also has consulted for various corporate and government research projects.
Francisco J. Montoro-Rios is an associate professor in the University of Granada (Spain) department of marketing and market research. His main research interests are social marketing, environmental consumer behavior, and online survey methodology. His work has been published in the Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Quality & Quantity, Online Information Journal, Computers in Human Behavior, among other journals, and has been involved in several research projects funded by public and private enterprises.
Footnotes
↵1 Signa Gel with a high concentration of sodium chloride to record the activity of corrugators and zygomatic muscles and heart rate, added to a saline gel Johnson & Johnson's K-Y Jelly with a concentration of sodium chloride of 0.29 g per 100 g of water, similar to that of perspiration.
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