Effects of Prosocial and Hope-Promoting Communication Strategies on COVID-19 Worry and Intentions for Risk-Reducing Behaviors and Vaccination: Experimental Study

The COVID-19 pandemic has engendered widespread fear and skepticism about recommended risk-reducing behaviors including vaccination. Health agencies are faced with the need to communicate to the public in ways that both provide reassurance and promote risk-reducing behaviors. Communication strategies that promote prosocial (PS) values and hope are being widely used; however, the existing research on the persuasiveness of these strategies has offered mixed evidence. There is also very little research examining the comparative effectiveness of PS and hope-promoting (HP) strategies. The aim of this study is to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of PS and HP messages in reassuring the public and motivating COVID-19 risk-reducing behaviors. A web-based factorial experiment was conducted in which a diverse sample of the US public was randomized to read messages which adapted existing COVID-19 information from a public website produced by a state government public health department to include alternative framing language: PS, HP, or no additional framing (control). Participants then completed surveys measuring COVID-19 worry and intentions for COVID-19 risk-reducing behaviors and vaccination. COVID-19 worry was unexpectedly higher in the HP than in the control and PS conditions. Intentions for COVID-19 risk-reducing behaviors did not differ between groups; however, intentions for COVID-19 vaccination were higher in the HP than in the control condition, and this effect was mediated by COVID-19 worry. It appears that HP communication strategies may be more effective than PS strategies in motivating risk-reducing behaviors in some contexts but with the paradoxical cost of promoting worry.