Nonprofit organization advertising on social media: The role of personality, advertizing appeals, and bandwagon effects

The current study aims to explore the role of personality in a nonprofit organization's advertisement on social media and how it influences two advertising components: the types of advertising appeal and social media metrics. A 2 (emotional vs. rational appeal) x 2 (high vs. low social media metrics) full-factorial experiment was conducted. We found the positive effects of specific personality traits on attitude toward the ad and donation intention; the six HEXACO personality traits were positively related to attitude toward the ad, whereas Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to experience were the only traits positively related to donation intention. There was no interaction effect of the personality traits and the type of advertising appeal. We also found that Conscientiousness had a moderating role on the bandwagon effect of social media metrics, such that the bandwagon effects of social media metrics on the attitude toward the ad and donation intentions were only significant for participants with moderate (M) Conscientiousness and high (M + 1SD) Conscientiousness. Our findings will contribute to providing practical insights for how to design an effective nonprofit advertisement on social media as well as filling the gap in the literature on nonprofit advertising and personality.