Psychological proximity as a predictor of participation in a social media issue campaign

Understanding how to motivate people's engagement in global or social issues has been challenging. Using Construal Level Theory, this study explored the role of psychological proximity as a predictor of individuals' willingness to engage in supportive behaviors related to a social media issue campaign. Two dimensions of psychological proximity (i.e., cognitive and emotional proximity) were developed and measured to determine whether they are predictors of participation intentions related to a Facebook campaign about child welfare in Africa. Structural Equation Modeling tested the proposed model with survey data collected from 408 U.S. adult residents via Amazon's MTurk. Results indicated that salience, knowledge, and relevance were strong indicators of cognitive proximity, whereas emotional connectedness and empathy were determinants of emotional proximity. Both cognitive and emotional proximity were found to have a significant and positive effect on people's intentions to participate in the social media issue campaign.