Incentivizing online consumer engagement for public health messages

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Abstract

Today companies take advantage of online social networks by using social media marketing tools to engage consumers and excite electronic word-of-mouth. Companies benefit by allowing consumers to comment, like and share product and brand messages throughout their online social networks. Stimulating online engagement for public health messages is especially challenging. Public health messages typically deal with sensitive issues and difficult lifestyle changes such as HIV testing, smoking cessation and alcohol reduction. Offering incentives and using different message appeals are common promotional tactics, yet little is known about how these come together to influence consumer engagement and message diffusion. Much of the online engagement research focuses on the actions of individuals and overlooks the network structure of social interactions. The aim of this study is to investigate the ways in which incentives and message appeals influence the network structure of online consumer engagement for public health messages within social media networks. An experiment conducted on Facebook manipulated three incentive conditions (monetary versus non-monetary versus social recognition) and presented two message appeals (informative versus fear). The monetary condition offered a chance to win a $50 gift card, the non-monetary condition was a chance to win two movie tickets and the social recognition condition presented the opportunity to be featured on the “wall of fame”. In total 130 student subjects were randomly assigned to one of four Facebook groups, three incentive groups and one control group. Group size ranged from 32 to 33. Subjects in each group were simultaneously exposed to the same two public health messages on the negative effects of smoking, one message framed as an informative appeal and one fear appeal. Subjects were instructed to take part in the online discussion by sharing, commenting and liking posts on the Facebook page. Results show monetary incentives stimulate the highest overall online engagement with 101 posts followed by non-monetary incentives with 92 then social recognition with 71 and 55 posts for the no incentives control group. Across all study conditions findings indicate fear appeals promote greater engagement compared to informative appeals. A visual inspection of the 2-mode networks reveals structural similarities among those who engage online. The monetary and non-monetary networks for both fear and informative appeals have one large component with only a few pairs whereas the control and social recognition networks contain many small components. With regards to network density, monetary and non-monetary networks are relatively more dense (0.133 and 0.119, respectively) compared to social recognition and control networks (0.065 and 0.047, respectively) and networks responding to fear appeals are more dense than informative appeals in all but the monetary incentives condition
where the reverse occurred (0.123 for informative and 0.105 for fear). These findings highlight important structural differences of online engagement. This study examined online engagement on Facebook with a small student sample over a brief time period for one health issue. Additional research is needed to validate study results using different online platforms for other health issues and to overcome study limitations of sample size and engagement length.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication XXXVI International Sunbelt Social Network Conference
Subtitle of host publicationPresentation and Poster Abstract
Place of PublicationNewport Beach, CA
PublisherInternational Network for Social Network Analysis
Pages201
Number of pages1
Publication statusPublished - 2016

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