Content area
Abstract
Social marketing research grows increasingly relevant in the face of persistent modern problems; this study examines how social and temporal framing might influence the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns. By featuring diverse contexts, this study addresses both individual and prosocial behaviors. With a basis in self-referencing and psychological distance research, as well as social dilemma theory, the authors derive hypotheses about social and temporal framing effects. A between-subjects experiment, incorporated into an online survey among a large student sample, reveals the relevance of temporal framing for enhancing intentions to change both individual and prosocial behaviors. Social framing influences behavioral intentions especially in the prosocial condition. The category of behavior determines the effectiveness of social marketing related to that behavior. However, the small effect sizes and lack of globally interpretable effects indicate that social and temporal framing do not make relevant differences in social marketing effectiveness.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]