The role of collectivism orientation in differential normative mechanisms: A cross-national study of anti-smoking public service announcement effectiveness

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explicate the complexities of the mechanism through which norm messages achieve their intended goals, and to examine how the normative mechanism differs according to the collectivism orientation of two culturally distinct countries. To analyze data collected from 464 US and Korean college students, it uses the O-S-O-R approach, which represents four elements of the communication process - (pre) Orientation-Stimuli-(post) Orientation-Response. Multi-group path analysis yields three major findings. First, collectivism orientation is significantly related to injunctive norm perception (INP) only among Korean respondents. Second, descriptive norm perceptions (DNP) and INP as post-orientations lead to behavioural intention through different mechanisms. That is, INP leads to behavioural intention directly regardless of types of norm messages and country, but indirectly through issue importance only in the IN message condition among the US. participants. By contrast, DNP leads to behavioural intention only directly, except for the DN message condition among the US participants in which there is no such significant relationship. Third, the normative mechanism was more rigorous and consistent among Koreans than Americans.