Gauging the public's preparedness for mobile public relations: The “Text for Haiti” campaign

The technology acceptance model was created to measure the public's attitudes toward and acceptance of new technologies. Text messaging has been used in the public relations domain for crisis communication alerts, but there have been few attempts to use it in other domains. Through an electronic survey of previous American Red Cross donors, donors to the “Text for Haiti” campaign had more favorable attitudes than those who did not donate via text messaging. However, the survey participants did not completely reflect the technology acceptance model. Although they perceived that text message campaigns were easy to participate in, the path analysis revealed that these thoughts resulted in less desirable attitudes toward participating in the campaigns.

► Despite the widespread use of text messaging by the American public, little scholarly research has been conducted on how mobile public relations campaigns have been perceived.
► The application of the technology acceptance model revealed that the public is amply prepared for text messaging campaigns when it comes to skills; however, the attitudes are somewhat mixed toward campaign messages being sent to their mobile phones.
► Donors to the “Text for Haiti” had more favorable attitudes toward mobile phones being used for public relations campaigns and had higher rates of behavioral intention to participate in such campaigns.
► However, path analysis revealed that the overall attitudes were negatively affected by the perceived ease of use, which echoes mobile marketing and advertising's concerns of privacy and costs associated with text messaging.