Testing of Message Appeals for Obesity Prevention Among Low-Income Audiences: What Is a Compelling Argument?

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Social marketing strategies for healthy eating need to appeal to consumers who are inundated by commercial marketing and availability of low-nutrient dense foods.  Recent Federal revisions to the guidance for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) have offered the potential to explore new public health themes and use grounded research methods to generate creative message strategies that will resonate with targeted low-income populations.  The Network for a Healthy California in the California Department of Public Health is using evidence from annual media evaluation surveys and formative research to inform social marketing efforts and mass media.

Methods: An annual state-wide media evaluation survey shows up to 71% aided recall among SNAP recipients of any mass media ads, showing that penetration of marketing is considerable. Results also indicate a significant relationship between high recall levels and greater levels of self-efficacy for family change behaviors related to healthy eating and physical activity among SNAP recipients and eligibles. To build on quantitative evaluation methods, formative research has been conducted to test three distinctly different media appeals or argument frames informed by Fishbein's Integrative Model of Health Behavior for use in the next wave of the social marketing campaigns targeted to low-income California families—one focused on social normative change among California mothers working to improve family health, one on parental protection and another on social justice/community environmental change. Audience members were randomly exposed to one of the three appeals and completed pre and post interviews.

Results: Findings indicate that the social normative platform performs best when assessed against a number of obesity-prevention-related belief and behavioral outcome measures.  The research suggests that for low-income mothers, obesity prevention campaigns emphasizing changing social norms about family health will be more effective than those emphasizing the protection of children or the importance of policy and environmental change.

Conclusions: Social marketing campaigns featuring obesity prevention message appeals that incorporate social normative theoretical constructs appear to be more likely to reach behavioral goals than messages supported by parental protection or social justice/environmental change concepts.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Media and communication campaign developers should consider differences between underlying arguments in appeals and how they might influence desired health behavior outcomes.