Advertising for Brands and Society: The Role of Perceived Authenticity in Corporate Transgender Advocacy Advertising Campaigns.

While organizations have increasingly engaged in corporate social advocacy (CSA) for sexual and gender diverse populations, transgender people have often been overlooked in LGBTQ advocacy campaigns. Among the different strategic communication tactics that can be used in CSA, advertising is an important channel for organizations to send their prosocial messages as well as to publicly demonstrate their support of particular causes and populations. Given the tension between growing social acceptance of gender diverse populations and anti-transgender political landscape in the USA, only a handful of organizations have recently shown transgender advocacy advertising campaigns. This study explores corporate transgender advocacy advertising campaigns as one contemporary CSA program, attending to the role of authenticity in CSA effectiveness. Findings show cisgender people perceive authenticity from transgender advocacy advertising campaigns regardless of their gender, which in turn, mitigates consumer skepticism and increases the willingness to engage with the campaign on social media and, further, to engage with other transgender advocacy campaigns. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Avoiding Covid-19 risk information in the United States: The role of attitudes, norms, affect, social dominance orientations, and perceived trustworthiness of scientists.

This study seeks guidance from the planned risk information avoidance model to explore drivers of risk information avoidance in the context of COVID-19. Data were collected early during the pandemic. Among our most notable results is that participants who are more oriented toward social dominance and are more skeptical of scientists' credibility have (1) more supportive attitudes toward risk information avoidance and (2) feel social pressure to avoid risk information. The findings of this study highlight how the role of skepticism in science and intergroup ideologies, such as social dominance, can have important implications for how people learn about health-related information, even in times of heightened crisis.

How Interactive Data Visualization and Users' BMI (Body Mass Index) Influence Obesity Prevention Intentions: The Mediating Effect of Cognitive Absorption.

The current study examines how interactive data visualization can augment the persuasive potential of health information. In an experiment using an obesity-awareness website (N = 248), we manipulated the level of interactivity in a data visualization tool that featured obesity prevalence in the U.S. and measured participants' absorption into the website, perceived issue severity, content perceptions, and intentions to prevent/treat obesity. Our data demonstrated that lower BMI participants reported greater cognitive absorption when highly interactive data visualization was available on the website. Subsequently, greater cognitive absorption into the website led to higher perceived issue severity, greater content perceptions, and higher obesity prevention intentions among lower BMI participants but not among higher BMI participants.