The Influence of Fitness Between Message Framing and Audience Regulatory Focus on Green Concern Advertisements Persuasion Effect

This study discusses the application of the regulatory focus of the individual motivation systems to green public service advertisements advocating environmental protection. First, it aims to determine whether the previously proposed regulatory fit theory can be applied to public service advertisements with characteristics different from those of commercial advertisements. Second, it aims to understand how to design messages to achieve the best effect on audiences with different foci. This study takes the regulatory focus theory as the basis and green public service advertisements as the films. After adopting 2 ~ 2 ~ 2 three-factor design to test the interaction relations among the individual regulatory focus, message regulatory focus, and message framing. The results from the 217 college respondents indicate that the audience is influenced by regulatory focus when receiving messages from public service advertisements, which is similar to the influence of commercial advertisements. That is, when audience with a promotion focus, films with promotion focus and positive framing have a best advertisement effect. On the other hand, the audience with a prevention focus, films with prevention focus and negative framing also has a better advertisement effect.