Message Sidedness in Health Claims: Roles of Mood State, Product Involvement, and Self-Rated Health Status

Hung-Chou Lin; Shih-Tse Wang

doi:10.3389/fnut.2021.729370

Message Sidedness in Health Claims: Roles of Mood State, Product Involvement, and Self-Rated Health Status

Front Nutr. 2021 Dec 14:8:729370. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2021.729370. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Hung-Chou Lin¹, Shih-Tse Wang²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Adult and Continuing Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan.
² Graduate Institute of Bio-Industry Management, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.

Abstract

Most of the previous studies with respect to message sidedness mainly focus on the effect of message sidedness in advertising on behavior of consumers and it is unknown how consumers respond to different message sidedness when a one-sided or two-sided message in claims shown on the package of a healthy food product. This study explores the underlying mechanisms how consumers respond to different message sidedness in claims. The results indicate that two-sided messages in claims are more persuasive than one-sided messages because they pass the "sufficiency threshold." In addition, the results of this article show that mood state, product involvement, and self-rated health of individuals moderate the relationship between message sidedness in claims and product evaluation.

Keywords: food product evaluation; heuristic-systematic model; message sidedness; mood state; product involvement; self-rated health.