Enlisting the influence of others: Alternative strategies for persuasive media campaigns

This study investigated an Australian antidrug campaign that targeted adolescents directly and indirectly via recruiting parents into drug prevention. Eighty-six parent-child dyads completed surveys measuring campaign evaluations, discussions about drugs, and beliefs about risks to self (own child) and to the average young Australian. Adolescents were optimistic about risks, and media impact was evident only in perceptions of risk to others. Parents were less optimistic, and perceptions of campaign quality predicted perceived risk to own child and discussion about drugs. However, this was moderated by negative affect associated with the campaign. There was some evidence that discussions influenced adolescents' perceptions of personal risk. This demonstrates the importance of individual responses and communication processes in determining the impact of persuasive media messages.

An examination of the factors that influence drivers’ willingness to use hand-held mobile phones

Hand-held mobile phone use while driving is illegal throughout Australia yet many drivers persist with this behaviour. This study aims to understand the internal, driver-related and external, situational-related factors influencing drivers’ willingness to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving. Sampling 160 university students, this study utilised the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to examine a range of belief-based constructs. Additionally, drivers’ personality traits of neuroticism and extroversion were measured with the Neuroticism Extroversion Openness-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). In relation to the external, situational-related factors, four different driving-related scenarios, which were intended to evoke differing levels of drivers’ reported stress, were devised for the study and manipulated drivers’ time urgency (low versus high) and passenger presence (alone versus with friends). In these scenarios, drivers’ willingness to use a mobile phone in general was measured. Hierarchical regression analyses across the four different driving scenarios found that, overall, the TPB components significantly accounted for drivers’ willingness to use a mobile phone above and beyond the demographic variables. Subjective norms, however, was only a significant predictor of drivers’ willingness in situations where the drivers were driving alone. Generally, neuroticism and extroversion did not significantly predict drivers’ willingness above and beyond the TPB and demographic variables. Overall, the findings broaden our understanding of the internal and external factors influencing drivers’ willingness to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving despite the illegality of this behaviour. The findings may have important practical implications in terms of better informing road safety campaigns targeting drivers’ mobile phone use which, in turn, may contribute to a reduction in the extent that mobile phone use contributes to road crashes.

Road trauma perceptions and the potential influence of the media

The United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) recognises the urgency of addressing global road trauma. Road crashes and attempts to reduce risky driving, including public education campaigns, receive media attention in many countries. In Australia, road fatalities have declined significantly. However, the extent of awareness about this success and of fatalities overall is unclear. A survey of 833 Australian drivers revealed the majority of participants under-estimated fatalities. Unexpectedly, some under-estimates appear based on recollections of media reports. The findings suggest lack of awareness of the extent of road deaths and that, paradoxically, media reports might contribute to underestimations. This represents a major public health challenge. Engaging community support for road safety, relative to other health/safety messages, may prove difficult if the extent of road trauma is misunderstood. Misperceptions about fatality levels may be a barrier to road users adopting safety precautions or supporting further road safety countermeasures.

Humorous health messages : "a fresh approach" for road safety advertising campaigns?

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Recently, throughout Australasia, humorous appeals have become implemented increasingly in health advertising despite limited evidence regarding the persuasiveness of different types of humour. Of those studies available which have examined the persuasiveness of humorous messages, the type of humour is often not defined so it is unclear what type of humour is being examined. Speck’s (1991) typology includes five types of humour; comic wit, sentimental humour, satire, sentimental comedy, and full comedy. Each type of humour is based on one or more humour generation processes; namely, incongruity-resolution, disparagement humour, and arousal-safety. It has been acknowledged that more research is needed to determine the relative persuasiveness of these different types of humour and to identify those types which may be most effective for health advertising. The current research explored individuals’ thoughts about, and their responses to some different types of, humorous messages addressing the serious health topic of road safety. Methods: A preliminary qualitative, study was conducted involving discussions with licensed drivers (N = 18) regarding their thoughts and feelings about humorous road safety messages in general as well as in response to some (5 in total) pre-existing advertisements. Men (n = 10) and women of younger and older age groups (17-24 or 25+ years) participated in one of six discussions. Participants were recruited from an existing community-based database held by the authors’ Research Centre or were approached directly on the university campus. Ethical approval was gained for the study. Each participant was offered $AUD40. A semi-structured interview schedule guided the discussion (e.g., was it humorous?, would this ad influence you?). Audio-recordings of the discussions were professionally transcribed and the transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: The findings revealed that, irrespective of age and gender, humour that was clever, incorporated something unexpected and contrasting with the everyday, was a preferred and relevant approach, thus aligning with incongruity-based theories of humour generation and humour types, such as comic wit and satire. As a persuasive function, humorous messages were considered likely to be talked about (and relatively more so than traditional fear-based approaches). Participants also felt that humorous messages would need to be used cautiously as humour that was considered inappropriate and/or associated with serious occurrences, such as a crash, would be unlikely to persuade. Conclusions: The findings highlight some of the potential benefits of using humour, such as increasing the extent to which an advertisement is talked about as well as the types of humour which may be effective in this context. Implications for research and/or practice: While this research has provided important insight, future research which quantitatively assesses the persuasive effects of different types of humorous road safety messages within a larger, representative sample is needed. This current study has highlighted some humorous approaches which may hold persuasive promise in encouraging individuals to adopt safer attitudes and behaviours not only on the road, but in relation to serious health issues more broadly.

Social media in selected Australian federal and state election campaigns, 2010-15

Campaigning in Australian election campaigns at local, state, and federal levels is fundamentally affected by the fact that voting is compulsory in Australia, with citizens who are found to have failed to cast their vote subject to fines. This means that - contrary to the situation in most other nations – elections are decided not by which candidate or party has managed to encourage the largest number of nominal supporters to make the effort to cast their vote, but by some 10-20% of genuine ‘swinging voters’ who change their party preferences from one election to the next. Political campaigning is thus aimed less at existing party supporters (so-called ‘rusted on’ voters whose continued support for the party is essentially taken for granted) than at this genuinely undecided middle of the electorate. Over the past decades, this has resulted in a comparatively timid, vague campaigning style from both major party blocs (the progressive Australian Labor Party [ALP] and the conservative Coalition of the Liberal and National Parties [L/NP]). Election commitments that run the risk of being seen as too partisan and ideological are avoided as they could scare away swinging voters, and recent elections have been fought as much (or more) on the basis of party leaders’ perceived personas as they have on stated policies, even though Australia uses a parliamentary system in which the Prime Minister and state Premiers are elected by their party room rather than directly by voters. At the same time, this perceived lack of distinctiveness in policies between the major parties has also enabled the emergence of new, smaller parties which (under Australia’s Westminster-derived political system) have no hope of gaining a parliamentary majority but could, in a close election, come to hold the balance of power and thus exert disproportionate influence on a government which relies on their support.

Just say no? The influence of personal goals, beliefs, psychosocial adjustment, and parental relationships in drug use by adolescents

The study in its entirety focused on factors related to adolescents decisions concerning drug use. The term drug use is taken here to include the use of tobacco products, alcohol, narcotics, and other addictive substances. First, the reasons given for drug use (attributions) were investigated. Secondly, the influence of personal goals, the beliefs involved in decision making, psychosocial adjustment including body image and involvement with peers, and parental relationships on drug use were studied. Two cohorts participated in the study. In 1984, a questionnaire on reasons for drug use was administered to a sample of adolescents aged 14-16 (N=396). A further questionnaire was administered to another sample of adolescents aged 14-16 (N=488) in 1999. The results for both cohorts were analyzed in Articles I and II. In Articles III and IV further analysis was carried out on the second cohort (N=488). The research report presented here provides a synthesis of all four articles, together with material from a further analysis. In a comparison of the two cohorts it was found that the attributions for drug use had changed considerably over the intervening fifteen-year period. In relation to alcohol and narcotics use an increase was found in reasons involving inner subjective experiences, with mention of the good feeling and fun resulting from alcohol and narcotics use. In addition, the goals of alcohol consumption were increasingly perceived as drinking to get drunk, and for its own sake. The attributions for the adolescents own smoking behavior were quite different from the attributions for smoking by others. The attributions were only weakly influenced by the participants gender or by their smoking habits, either in 1984 or 1999. In relation to participants own smoking, the later questionnaire elicited more mention of inner subjective experiences involving "good feeling. In relation to the perceived reasons for other people s smoking, it elicited more responses connected with the notion of "belonging. In the second sample, the results indicated that the levels of body satisfaction among adolescent girls are lower than those among adolescent boys. Overall, dissatisfaction with one's physical appearance seemed to relate to drug use. Girls were also found to engage in more discussions than boys; this applied to (i) discussion with peers (concerning both intimate and general matters), and (ii) discussion with parents (concerning general matters). However, more than a quarter of the boys (out of the entire population) reported only low intimacy with both parents and peers. If both drinking and smoking were considered, it seemed that girls in particular who reported drinking and smoking also reported high intimacy with parents and peers. Boys who reported drinking and smoking reported only medium intimacy with parents and peers. In addition, having an intimate relationship with one's peers was associated with a greater tendency to drink purely in order to get drunk. Overall, the results seemed to suggest that drug use is connected with a close relationship with peers and (surprisingly) with a close relationship with parents. Nevertheless, there were also indications that to some extent peer relationships can also protect adolescents from smoking and alcohol use. The results, which underline the complexity of adolescent drug use, are taken up in the Discussion section. It may be that body image and/or other identity factors play a more prominent role in all drug use than has previously been acknowledged. It does appear that in the course of planning support campaigns for adolescents at risk of drug use, we should focus more closely on individuals and their inner world. More research on this field is clearly needed, and therefore some ideas for future research are also presented.

Influence limitation in multi-campaign social networks: A Shapley value based approach

We investigate the problem of influence limitation in the presence of competing campaigns in a social network. Given a negative campaign which starts propagating from a specified source and a positive/counter campaign that is initiated, after a certain time delay, to limit the the influence or spread of misinformation by the negative campaign, we are interested in finding the top k influential nodes at which the positive campaign may be triggered. This problem has numerous applications in situations such as limiting the propagation of rumor, arresting the spread of virus through inoculation, initiating a counter-campaign against malicious propaganda, etc. The influence function for the generic influence limitation problem is non-submodular. Restricted versions of the influence limitation problem, reported in the literature, assume submodularity of the influence function and do not capture the problem in a realistic setting. In this paper, we propose a novel computational approach for the influence limitation problem based on Shapley value, a solution concept in cooperative game theory. Our approach works equally effectively for both submodular and non-submodular influence functions. Experiments on standard real world social network datasets reveal that the proposed approach outperforms existing heuristics in the literature. As a non-trivial extension, we also address the problem of influence limitation in the presence of multiple competing campaigns.

Influence of Training Set Selection in Artificial Neural Network-Based Propagation Path Loss Predictions

This paper analyzes the use of artificial neural networks (ANNs) for predicting the received power/path loss in both outdoor and indoor links. The approach followed has been a combined use of ANNs and ray-tracing, the latter allowing the identification and parameterization of the so-called dominant path. A complete description of the process for creating and training an ANN-based model is presented with special emphasis on the training process. More specifically, we will be discussing various techniques to arrive at valid predictions focusing on an optimum selection of the training set. A quantitative analysis based on results from two narrowband measurement campaigns, one outdoors and the other indoors, is also presented.

Use of multi-sensory marketing techniques and its influence on brand experience in retail and HORECA sector

Double degree. A Work Project presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA- School of Business and Economics and Warsaw School of Economics

Crowdfunding campaigns: Perceived quality and success

Research in Crowdfunding is an emerging priority within the field of Entrepreneurship. Hundreds of platforms provide nowadays multiple Crowdfunding schemes which are intended to make it easier for entrepreneurs and others to collect money from the crowd. However, only a few campaigns become successful as others don’t reach the pre-established funding goal. It is thus necessary to keep on understanding the dynamics of these platforms and the factors which justify success. The asymmetry of information has been shown to be a delicate issue as people perceive quality in different manners. As so, this research aims to understand which components of perceived quality mostly influence investments decisions. Mainly Entrepreneurship and Marketing theories were explored along the way. This is research follows a causal approach where nineteen hypotheses are tested. An experimental survey was conducted and data was collected from 127 people who were asked to evaluate one of the most important pieces of any Crowdfunding campaign – the pitch video – and consequently invest on the presented products.

Influence of personality factors on the consumption of personal care products

The study is significant from both an application perspective of marketing management as well as from an academic angle. The market for personal care products is a highly fragmented one, with intense competition for specific niche segments. It is well known in marketing literature that the bulk of the volume of sale is accounted for by the minority who are the heavy users. This study will help the marketers to identify the personality profile of such a group and understand how the interaction of personality factors at least partially explains differences in consumption. This knowledge might be useful for better segmentation using psychographic variables as well as for designing specific advertisement campaigns to target the vulnerable groups of customers. From a theoretical perspective, the research may contribute to understanding how specific personality variables and their interaction lead to differences in consumption. The knowledge corresponding to self theory, social comparison theory, persuasibility, evidence from psychology of eating disorders: these all may be integrated into a common frame work for explaining consumption of products having a social function.

PM2.5 and PM10: The influence of sugarcane burning on potential cancer risk

In Brazil, sugarcane fields are often burned to facilitate manual harvesting, and this burning causes environmental pollution from the large amounts of soot released into the atmosphere. This material contains numerous organic compounds such as PAHs. In this study, the concentrations of PAHs in two particulate-matter fractions (PM2.5 and PM10) in the city of Araraquara (SE Brazil, with around 200,000 inhabitants and surrounded by sugarcane plantations) were determined during the sugarcane harvest (HV) and non-harvest (NHV) seasons in 2008 and 2009. The sampling strategy included four campaigns, with 60 samples in the NHV season and 220 samples in the HV season. The PM2.5 and PM10 fractions were collected using a dichotomous sampler (10 L min(-1), 24 h) with Teflon (TM) filters. The filter sets were extracted (ultrasonic bath with hexane/acetone (1:1 v/v)) and analyzed by HPLC/Fluorescence. The median concentration for total PAHs (PM2.5 in 2009) was 0.99 ng m(-3) (NHV) and 3.3 ng m(-3) (HV). In the HV season, the total concentration of carcinogenic PAHs (benz(a)anthracene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, and benzo(a)pyrene) was 5 times higher than in the NHV season. B(a)P median concentrations were 0.017 ng m(-3) and 0.12 ng m(-3) for the NHV and HV seasons, respectively. The potential cancer risk associated with exposure through inhalation of these compounds was estimated based on the benzo[a]pyrene toxic equivalence (BaPeq), where the overall toxicity of a PAR mixture is defined by the concentration of each compound multiplied by its relative toxic equivalence factor (TEF). BaPeq median (2008 and 2009 years) ranged between 0.65 and 1.0 ng m(-3) and 1.2-1.4 ng m(-3) for the NHV and HV seasons, respectively. Considering that the maximum permissible BaPeq in ambient air is 1 ng m(-3), related to the increased carcinogenic risk, our data suggest that the level of human exposure to PAHs in cities surrounded by sugarcane crops where the burning process is used is cause for concern. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Measurements of labile Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn levels at a northeastern Brazilian coastal area under the influence of oil production with diffusive gradients in thin films technique (DGT)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Faking or Convincing: Why Do Some Advertising Campaigns Win Creativity Awards?

Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002, it has become commonplace in the advertising industry to use creativity-award-show prizes instead of gross income figures to attract new customers. Therefore, achieving a top creativity ranking and winning creativity awards have become high priorities in the advertising industry. Agencies and marketers have always wondered what elements in the advertising creation process would lead to the winning of creativity awards. Although this debate has been dominated by pure speculation about the success of different routines, approaches and strategies in winning creativity awards, for the first time our study delivers an empirical insight into the key drivers of creativity award success. We investigate what strategies and which elements of an advertising campaign are truly likely to lead to winning the maximum number of creativity awards. Using a sample of 108 campaigns, we identify factors that influence campaign success at international advertising award shows. We identify innovativeness and the integration of multiple channels as the key drivers of creativity award success. In contrast to industry beliefs, meaningful or personally connecting approaches do not seem to generate a significant benefit in terms of winning creativity awards. Finally, our data suggest that the use of so-called “fake campaigns” to win more creativity awards does not prove to be effective.