State University of New York, Plattsburgh (Bator), Arizona State University (Cialdini)

From the Abstract of this article in Journal of Social Science Issues, Vol. 56, No. 3, 2000, pp. 527-541: "The goal of this article is to provide specific guidelines to help create effective proenvironmental public service announcements (PSAs). Campaign designers are encouraged to initially identify and investigate the optimal target audience and then draft and test reactions by samples of that audience using pilot messages. Designers are also advised to consider research on attitude persistence, memory, and social norms and apply this research to the message content and presentation style. The article concludes with an application of research from social psychology to a series of overall guidelines for effective PSAs...."


This 15-page paper intends to address how to use attitude change and behaviour change information in creating PSAs. The authors describe the preproduction process of thoroughly researching the intended audience and pretesting campaign messages on audience members (design evaluation) and adjusting them to accommodate for potential marketing barriers before disseminating them.


The article concludes with suggestions for improving pro-environmental PSAs. It suggests that during the preproduction stage, campaign designers examine: 1) which segment of their audience is most at risk for performing undesirable behaviours, and 2) who is open to media persuasion. The designers then need to determine which behaviours are most amenable to change via PSAs. The audience is then surveyed to learn what experiences they have that are relevant to the issue, so that messages can be built upon that relevance. A campaign spokesperson is chosen based on their credibility with that audience.


The messages are then pretested either through focus group interviews or theatre testing a sample audience. The authors suggest post-testing over time to see the results of messages, i.e., if they are retrievable memories and whether the audience has acted on them and has consolidated them in their self-concepts.


The subsequent phase is the concept development phase in which research is intended to: find if a message has strong attentional value and is relevant and understandable; find its strengths and weaknesses, including whether it demonstrates how to reach a goal and/or resolve a problem; discover whether it is vivid and useful and related to the life of the audience; and find whether it demonstrates norms and inspires commitment.


The authors suggest that messages be very specific, describe exactly how to solve a problem, explain precisely how the the behaviour changes should occur, and include an encoding cue. This cue is intended to be present in the behavioural setting where the problem occurs and activate motivation by providing a descriptive and/or injunctive norm that increases recall and action at the appropriate time. Finally, the article points to a checklist for evaluating PSA campaigns.


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