Observational analysis shows emotion management improves compliance with COVID-19 messages in individuals, suggesting marketing strategies can enhance emotional well-being.
COVID-19 riddled many Americans with fear and anxiety. This research examined the role that feelings of gratitude elicited by an advertisement played in individuals' emotional well-being and investigated how efforts to manage anxiety influenced social marketing initiatives at the outset of the COVID-19 outbreak. Study 1 revealed that emotion management serves as a mediator between feelings of gratitude and prosocial behavior. Prosocial behavior then leads to intentions to comply with social marketing messages to slow the spread of COVID-19. Study 2 investigated how enlisting an "other" orientation in social marketing messages stimulated compliance with government guidelines to control the spread of COVID-19. Results confirm that as individuals attempt to mitigate anxiety by experiencing feelings of gratitude, messages promoting an “other-orientation” were effective in garnering compliance with government guidelines. Implications for marketing and the management of messaging during catastrophic occurrences are discussed.
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Kemp et al. (2022) studied this question.
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