Message Testing of Three Ethical Approaches to Health Promotion

Abstract

This paper examines audience assessments of public service announcement (PSA)messages that exemplify three ethical approaches to health promotion: paternalism,liberalism, and empowerment. An exploratory message evaluation study using anantismoking PSA was conducted online among 384 South Korean adults and analyzedto pursue three objectives: first, to determine how people evaluated each message’seffectiveness; second, to determine how people evaluated each message’s ethicality;third, to determine whether the three message types interact with individualdifferences in smoking status, paternalism, and self-efficacy. Repeated-measuresAnalysis of Variance (ANOVA) indicated that audiences rated the liberal messagehighest in both effectiveness and ethicality. However, no interaction effects werefound. Implications are discussed regarding health message design and the publicperception of health promotion. It is suggested that health promoters might securepublic approval of their communication efforts as long as they provide neutrallyinformative messages that avoid directing people to take specific actions.