Emotional radio ads may ease listeners' anxiety and increase support for organ donation

Emotionally appealing radio ads (featuring personal stories of happy organ transplant patients and sad patients languishing on waiting lists) increase support for organ donation among non-donor listeners and address some of the concerns that deter organ donation. A new study suggests that participating in donor registries is not necessary.

Research is published in health communication journal.

More than 570 African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian adults who are not registered as organ donors were asked to participate in a 60-second radio ad in which a young mother expresses joy after receiving a heart transplant, or sadness in which a young mother appears. I heard an ad that evoked. She was on the waiting list for a double lung transplant, but feared it might not arrive in time to save her life due to organ shortages.

Emotional messages that evoked happiness or sadness affected many listeners, but the effects varied widely, the researchers found.

“In 75% of our models, happiness was positively associated with increased ad persuasiveness,” said Brian Quick, a communication professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who co-authored the study with James Madison University. “While sadness increased the persuasiveness of ads in 50% of models.” Professor of Communication Tobias Reynolds Tyrus and University of Iowa graduate students Minhei Chan and Ethan Morrow.

Before hearing one of the messages, study participants were surveyed to determine whether they held any of four common beliefs that prevent people from signing up for organ donor registries. Some non-donors were concerned about their physical integrity, believing that their bodies needed to remain intact after death in order to enjoy the afterlife, while others were concerned about the jinx of registering for an early death. Some people were superstitious about it.

Therefore, people who distrust medical institutions suspect that doctors will prioritize the health of their patients and instead choose to let patients die in order to procure organs.

There is also another factor to be concerned about. Some people are averse to thinking about the medical procedures that may be performed on their bodies to have their organs removed after death, says some researchers investigating donor recruitment messaging strategies and different beliefs and attitudes. said Quick, who conducted the research project. Barriers between social groups.

Doctors are struggling to identify effective messaging strategies to overcome the psychological barriers identified in the study and attract more donor registrants, Quick said. Organ donation registration rates are particularly low among African Americans and Hispanics, according to the Organ Sharing Network.

According to UNOS data, more than 103,000 people are currently on the national waiting list for organ transplants, and 17 people die every day due to a lack of available organs.

In the United States, transplant waiting lists disproportionately include African Americans and Hispanics. African Americans make up 12% of the U.S. population but make up about 29% of waitlist candidates. Similarly, Hispanics, who make up more than 18% of the U.S. population, account for 21% of waitlist candidates, according to U.S. Census Bureau population data and Organ Procurement and Transplant Network waitlist data.

“We found that happiness was associated with greater advertising persuasiveness, especially among non-donors who tend to be more distrustful of medicine,” Quick said. “This finding is important for future message design. Appeals that use happiness to emphasize that recipients' lives are saved and significantly improved after transplantation should be prioritized in future donor recruitment campaigns.” You should.”

The researchers found that ads that evoked feelings of sadness were more persuasive when non-donor listeners feared a jinx if they signed up to be a donor or if medical mistrust increased.

However, sadness did not make the ads more persuasive for people who viewed organ donation as unpleasant or were concerned about maintaining the integrity of the body after death, the data showed. Showed.

While the personal story of a young mother on the waiting list who risked death without a double lung transplant struck a chord with many listeners, the team asked campaign designers to It warned people to “handle with caution” any provocative messages that use “strong force”. He appealed for “grief” to encourage organ donation “lest it (the ad) be perceived as blatantly manipulative.”

“Our results provide clear messaging recommendations for those working to promote organ donor registration,” Quick said. “In other words, when reaching a distrustful audience, telling the story of an organ recipient is likely to elicit a sense of well-being, thereby increasing the persuasiveness of the ad among this skeptical audience.” Together, we hope to use this knowledge to improve campaigns aimed at educating organ donors about organ donation. ”