Gender effects of communicator and recipient on response to relationship violence public service announcements

Abstract

The gender of a message’s communicator and his or her recipients mayplay a critical role in audience responses to persuasive messages, especiallywhen the message deals with a gender-sensitive topic such as relationshipviolence. Guided by source credibility, gender schema theory, and thematch-up hypothesis, this study examined main and interaction effects ofcommunicator (voice-over) gender and recipient gender on the responseto a relationship violence public service announcement (PSA). Messageresponse refers to source credibility, perceived effectiveness, attitude towardthe issue, and behavioral intention. Results of an online experimentamong 223 college students show that the gender of the communicator significantlyaffects perceived source credibility, such that the female communicatorwas perceived as more credible than the male communicator.The gender of the recipient has a significant impact on attitude toward theissue of relationship violence. But no interaction effects of communicatorand recipient’s gender were found on any of the response variables.Relationship violence has become alarmingly widespread and frequentall over the globe. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO)identified relationship violence in 2002 as the most frequent of all violenceforms that women face in the world, including rape and sexual assault. Inthe United Stated, a yearly average of about 4 million women experienceassault by an intimate partner (American Psychological Association,1996). These alarming statistics provide sufficient reasons for communicationresearchers to understand the nature of the issue, identify messagefeatures that work for different types of audiences, and thereby develop effective relationship violence prevention campaigns. Undertaking thesetasks, the current study takes account of the relationship violence issue’suniquely gender-sensitive characteristics. Within the context of heterosexualrelationships, relationship violence usually involves a man and awoman, with the victim in most cases being the woman (US Departmentof Justice, 2007). Acknowledging this context, we investigated how thegenders of the communicator and the recipient independently and jointlyaffect recipients’ response to relationship violence prevention PSAs.Message response refers to recipients’perceived source credibility, perceivedeffectiveness, attitudes toward the issue, and behavioral intention,all of which are found to affect actual campaign effectiveness (e.g., Paek,Hove, Kim, & Jeong). Our investigation is guided by theoretical conceptssuch as source credibility, the match-up hypothesis (Kahle & Homer, 1985)and gender schema theory (Bem, 1981).Existing literature documents that the gender of either a message’s communicatoror its recipient could affect perceived source credibility (e.g.,Markham, 1988), attitudes (e.g., Lori & Pradeep, 2003), and behavioralintention (e.g., Nysveen, Pedersen, & Thorbjornsen, 2005). However, fewstudies have examined interaction effects of communicator and audiencegender in gender-sensitive issues such as relationship violence. The findingsof this study are intended to meet the need to develop relationship violenceprevention campaigns that target bystanders.