Framing in entertainment-education: Effects on processes of narrative persuasion

Nowadays, entertainment-education (E-E) is often used as a persuasive strategy to stimulate prosocial behavior. Although E-E is mostly regarded as a persuasive strategy in itself, in an increasing number of E-E programs several persuasive strategies are used to communicate the educational message to the audience. This study investigates the effects of a strategy widely used in health communication, but not previously studied in the field of E-E: framing. To this means we examined the effect of two different ways an E-E message can be framed: by emphasizing either the losses of not performing the behavior in question or the gains of performing this behavior. A serial multiple mediation model showed that framing affected intention to refrain from drunk cycling via counterarguing and attitude toward drunk cycling; the use of a gain frame decreased counterarguing, which decreased the attitude toward drunk cycling. This subsequently resulted in a higher intention to refrain from this behavior. Implications of these results are discussed.