Inducing Health Care Voluntarism Through Sequential Requests: Perceptions of Effort and Novelty

Previous studies associated with soliciting volunteers in health-related settings have generally not considered the role message selection plays in generating compliance. This research establishes the utility of the foot-in-the-door and the door-in-the-face techniques for inducing voluntarism using two different health-related topics while simultaneously manipulating the perceived effort and novelty of the requests. A significant sequential effect was evident in all experimental conditions of the design; a multivariate analysis revealed subtle although important distinctions in subjects' perceptions of different request sequences. Implications for the further study of sequential requests in health-related fields are discussed.