Effects of benefit-target framing on intentions to engage in avian flu vaccination and other health behaviors

Many health officials believe the future of public health is in prevention of infectious disease, due to threats like SARS, avian influenza and pandemic flu. As a result, vaccine promotion is becoming an increasingly important area for health communication researchers. However, adult vaccine compliance has historically been low. One strategy health promoters can consider is to emphasize the message that getting vaccinated not only protects the person receiving the immunization, but also loved ones, and even unknown others to whom the disease could be spread. The set of experiments described here tested whether such a strategy (called benefit-target framing ) could prove useful in promoting vaccine intentions and intentions to engage in other health behaviors. The first study randomized participants to receive a message about how getting vaccinated could protect either their own health, their loved ones\u27 health or the health of others they may not know. These messages were tested in the contexts of the avian flu and ITV vaccines. A second study tested mediators and moderators of the effects in the avian flu context. A third experiment attempted to replicate the effects in the area of obesity prevention. Findings suggest that for avian flu, the society messages (or those about unknown others) resulted in higher intentions than both messages about the self and those about loves ones. Results of the experiments reveal that the effects of benefit-target framing vary sharply across health topic and among groups with different demographic and personal experience characteristics. For example, for HPV, effects only occurred for single men, while in the obesity context, people who were not already engaging in regular exercise were more susceptible to other-oriented messages. In the avian flu context, past behavior, age and education were moderators. There is evidence from the mediation analyses that the effects of benefit-target framing on intentions are mediated through two opposite paths, as the society messages produced both more elaborate processing, which resulted in higher intentions than the self group, and lower levels of perceived risk, which resulted in lower intentions. Possible explanations for the findings, as well as implications for future research are discussed