Experts, peers, or celebrities? The role of different social endorsers on children’s fruit choice

Autor(en)

Alice Binder, Brigitte Naderer, Jörg Matthes

Abstrakt

This study investigates whether the source providing nutritional information matters for children's choice of fruit over candy. We conducted a between-subject experimental study with children (6-11 years; M-age = 8.20; N = 340). Children watched an audiovisual cartoon with nutritional messages provided by experts (expert condition), by celebrities (celebrity condition), or by typical consumers (peer condition). Additionally, we included a control group in which children were not exposed to any cartoon. As the dependent variable, we measured children's fruit choice over candy. As a mediator, measuring message processing we included children's argument awareness. Children's age was included as a moderator. The results indicate that the experimental conditions were equally effective in creating argument awareness for healthy eating compared to the control group. Children's argument awareness was generally rather low, and it did not influence children's fruit choice over candy. Nevertheless, there was a direct effect of the expert condition on children's fruit choice, pointing to an internalized "expert heuristic". No moderating effects of children's age were present. Our study indicates that using experts to present nutritional information within narrative media content is a potentially successful strategy to create argument awareness for healthy food and to impact children's selection of healthy food whereas peer and celebrity social endorsers are not.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Journal

Appetite

Band

155

Anzahl der Seiten

9

ISSN

0195-6663

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2020.104821

Publikationsdatum

12-2020

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Psychology(all), Nutrition and Dietetics

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/experts-peers-or-celebrities-the-role-of-different-social-endorsers-on-childrens-fruit-choice(85775681-3e78-4df5-87ff-4930cb77fcfd).html