Evaluating the impact of threat‐target framing on the effectiveness of wildlife conservation communication in public service advertising (PSA)

Public service advertising (PSA) is a familiar communication approach, and fear appeal is frequently used in PSAs to promote biodiversity conservation in China. Target framing can influence people's decision‐making, but it is unclear how efficient the PSAs are when using fear appeals with different threat‐target framing. We conducted a field experiment among Chinese college students ( n = 236) using two PSAs with different threat‐target framing. We randomly assigned participants to the two PSAs by pre‐screening via audience segmentation after the pre‐test, and the participants completed the post‐questionnaire and a modified dictator game after watching the corresponding PSA. Our evidence suggested that people better understood the importance and relevance of wildlife protection after watching the human‐oriented PSA. Although only the human‐oriented PSA could significantly improve people's behavioral intention, there was no difference in the efficiency of the two PSAs in increasing people's conservation intention. Hence, it is inadequate to affect the audiences by arousing more fear, but rather PSAs would need to provide possible courses of action for them. While the wildlife‐oriented PSA generated more donations than the human‐oriented one, donations may not be the best indicator in our study. Our findings can help design more effective wildlife conservation campaigns.