The Influence of Message Framing and Issue Involvement on Promoting Abandoned Animals Adoption Behaviors

An experiment of 2 (message framing: positive vs. negative) X 2 (issue involvement: high vs. low) factorial design was developed to examine the influence of message framing and issue involvement on the behavioral intentions of adopting abandoned animals. After exposed to either positively framed campaign poster or negatively framed one, 165 participants completed self-administered questionnaires. The results showed that the main effect of issue involvement was significant. However, both positive framing and negative framing have no significantly different effect on the behavioral intentions. As expected, the interaction of message framing and issue involvement were significant. When participants were highly involved with the issue, negative framing was more persuasive than were positive framing.