Emotional radio ads can soothe listeners’ concerns and increase support for organ donation

Radio ads with emotional appeal – featuring personal stories from a happy organ transplant recipient or a sad patient languishing on the waiting list – increase non-donor listeners’ support for organ donation and can be effective in overcoming some of the doubts that deter them . from joining the donor register, a new study suggests.

The research is published in the Journal of Health Communication.

More than 570 African American, Hispanic, and white adults who were not registered organ donors listened to a 60-second radio spot in which a young mother expressed her joy about receiving a heart transplant, or to a sadness-inducing ad in which a young mother she was on the waiting list for a double lung transplant and was afraid that this would not happen in time to save her life due to a shortage of organs.

Although poignant messages that evoked happiness or sadness influenced many listeners, the effects differed dramatically, the researchers found.

“Happiness was positively associated with greater ad persuasion in 75% of our models, while sadness increased ad persuasion in 50% of them,” says University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign communications professor Brian Quick, who worked with James Madison University co-authored the study. communication studies professor Tobias Reynolds-Tylus and U. of I. graduate students Minhey Chung and Ethan Morrow.

Before hearing any of the messages, study participants were surveyed to determine whether they held any of the four common beliefs that prevent people from signing up for the organ donor registry. Some non-donors were concerned about physical integrity, believing that their bodies should remain intact after death so that they could enjoy the afterlife, while others were superstitious that joining the registry would be a curse, causing them to drop out prematurely. die.

People who distrust the medical establishment therefore doubt that doctors will prioritize their well-being as patients and choose to let them die to obtain their organs instead.

And there’s another worrying factor: Some people are put off by thoughts about the medical procedures that might be done to their bodies to remove organs after their death, said Quick, who has conducted several research projects examining donor recruitment messaging strategies and different beliefs . barriers between social groups.

Practitioners are struggling to identify messaging strategies that will overcome the psychological barriers identified in current research and be effective in recruiting more people to become registered donors, Quick said. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, organ donation registration rates are particularly low among African Americans and Hispanics.

Currently, more than 103,000 people are on the national waiting list for an organ transplant, and 17 people die every day due to the shortage of available organs, according to UNOS data.

In the US, African Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately represented on the transplant waiting list. Although African Americans make up 12% of the U.S. population, they make up approximately 29% of candidates on the waitlist. Similarly, Hispanics, who represent more than 18% of the country’s population, account for 21% of waitlist candidates, according to population data from the U.S. Census Bureau and waitlist data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

“We found that feelings of happiness were associated with greater persuasiveness of ads, especially among non-donors who had higher levels of medical distrust,” Quick said. “This finding is important for future message design. Appeals that use happiness to highlight the recipients’ lives being saved and significantly improved after transplantation should be prioritized in future donor recruitment campaigns.”

When non-donor listeners were more afraid of being cursed if they became registered donors or had more medical distrust, the ad that evoked feelings of sadness was more persuasive, the team found.

But sadness did not increase the persuasion of those who viewed organ donation as unpleasant or who worried about maintaining bodily integrity after death, the data showed.

Although reaching out to people with the personal story of the young mother on the waiting list, who was at risk of dying without a double lung transplant, convinced many listeners, the team warned campaign designers to “be careful” with suggestive messages that uses “powerful sadness” to promote organ donation, “to avoid the (ads) being perceived as overtly manipulative.”

“Our results point to some clear message recommendations for those working to encourage organ donor registration,” Quick said. “That is, if you are reaching a distrustful audience, portraying stories about organ recipients is likely to evoke feelings of happiness, which in turn will increase the persuasiveness of advertising among this skeptical audience. Together we hope that this knowledge can be used to improve campaigns designed to educate the public about organ donation.”