Assessing Theoretical Mediators of Campaign-Induced Communication in the Context of Social Norms Campaign

The present paper examines the role of campaign-induced communication on the effects of a social norms campaign by focusing on cognitive elaboration, perceived injunctive norms, and message recall as mediating variables. Participants (<i>n</i> = 252; <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>m</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mi>age</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math> = 20.26) read an injunctive norms campaign message about choosing not to drink at parties or when socializing and were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (<i>control</i>: received no prompts, <i>prompt only</i>; received prompts to engage in interpersonal communication about the campaign message with close others during the following week; <i>prompt & plan</i>: received prompts to engage in interpersonal communication with close others during the following week and to write a plan for the communication). The results revealed that the prompt (either alone or with the plan) significantly motivated participants to engage in positive conversations about the campaign message during the next week. Similar to past findings, higher frequency of positive conversations about the campaign message indirectly predicted better behavioral outcomes via higher cognitive elaboration. The findings suggest that social norms campaign developers should be encouraged to design social norms messages with a brief prompt to motivate the target audience to engage in interpersonal communication and need to account for such interpersonal communication and its indirect effects in evaluating campaign messages.