The Ethicality of Using Fear for Social Advertising

While a substantial body of literature has examined the effect of fear appeals in advertising, few, if any, studies have looked into the ethicality of using such threatening messages, particularly for socially desirable outcomes. In this paper, a review of the different theories of ethics leads to the development of an empirical study where the effects of using both physically and socially threatening messages to encourage juveniles to develop anti-smoking behavioural intentions were tested. Using the data collected from a convenience sample of about 250 undergraduates from the University of Adelaide, the results show that fear appeals may indeed be perceived as unethical, even when used for socially desirable purposes. Moreover, social threats were perceived as more unethical and generated less fear than physical threat, suggesting that their use may be counter productive with this type of population. Finally, ethicality did not appear to relate necessarily to change in behavioural intentions.