Involvement, Attention, and Perceptions of Message Relevance in the Response to Persuasive Appeals

Conflicting results in the involvement literature arise from differences in the definitions and operationalizations applied to the term. This study argues that the construct should be treated as encompassing a number of related concepts and should be broken into its component forms. Two of these components, attention and perceptions of message relevance, were manipulated in an experiment designed to assess the impact of a message on heart disease risk reduction. Results indicate that attention to the message had primarily cognitive effects, leading to greater message recall, whereas perceptions of relevance influenced attitudes and behavior.