How goal framing and temporal distance influence the effectiveness of COVID- 19 vaccine persuasion

ABSTRACT

Vaccines are crucial for controlling deadly diseases, and how to persuade people to get vaccinated has become a hot topic in enhancing public health benefits. One way to increase the vaccination rate is to raise public awareness of the importance of vaccines through advertising. As an effective and cost-friendly approach, goal framing has been widely used in vaccine advertising. However, the literature has mixed findings about whether positive or negative goal framing is more effective in persuading people to get vaccinated. The present study aims to investigate how temporal distance (present vs. future) interacts with different types of goal framing (positive vs. negative) in persuading people to get the COVID-19 vaccine. We hypothesized that negative goal framing is more persuasive when the advertising focuses on present outcomes, while positive goal framing is more effective when combined with future- focused outcomes. We further hypothesized that the inner mechanism is the intertemporal asymmetry of approach and avoidance motivation. More specifically, the avoidance motivation induced by a negative frame is stronger in the present, while the approach motivation induced by a positive frame is stronger in the future. The perceived risk of COVID-19 moderated this effect. Four studies were conducted to examine our hypotheses. Study 1 was conducted to preliminarily investigate how goal framing and temporal distance jointly influence willingness to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The aim of Study 2 was to verify the mediating effect of approach and avoidance motivation in a different advertising setting, as well as to rule out the potential mediators of the construal level and positive/ negative emotions. In Study 3, we further tested the mediators by manipulating participants' approach and avoidance motivation. Study 4 was a quasi-experiment in which we recruited participants from areas with different levels of COVID-19 risk to test how perceived risk moderated the interaction effect of goal framing and temporal distance. The results showed that a negative goal frame was more persuasive when combined with present-focused advertising, while a positive goal frame was more effective when combined with future- focused advertising (Study 1, N = 363). Avoidance motivation mediated the relationship between the goal frame and vaccine uptake in the present context, while approach motivation mediated the relationship between the goal frame and vaccine uptake in the future context (Study 2, N = 292). The results in Study 3 ( N = 347) revealed that approach motivation priming increases the persuasiveness of the present-positive frame, while avoidance motivation priming increases the persuasiveness of the future- negative frame. COVID-19 risk also had an impact on the relationship between goal framing and temporal distance on vaccine uptake. When the COVID-19 risk was high, the difference in vaccine uptake between present-positive and present-negative conditions disappeared, while the future-positive frame was still more persuasive than the future- negative frame (Study 4, N = 423). In conclusion, the present study found an interactive effect of goal framing and temporal distance in persuading people to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Avoidance/approach motivation mediates the relationship between goal framing and vaccine uptake in the present/future temporal context. The perceived COVID risk further moderated the interaction effect. The present study contributes to both the framing and approachavoidance motivation literature and sheds light on future practices in persuading people to get the COVID vaccine and promoting the uptake of other vaccines.