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Health Education Research Advance Access published online on October 19, 2009
Health Education Research, doi:10.1093/her/cyp061
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Investigating message-framing effects in the context of a tailored intervention promoting physical activity

Jonathan van 't Riet1,*, Robert A. C. Ruiter2, Marieke Q. Werrij2 and Hein de Vries3

1 Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Wageningen University and Research Centre, PO Box 29703, 2502 LS The Hague, The Netherlands
2 Department of Work and Social Psychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
3 School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI), Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Correspondence to: * Correspondence to: J. van ’t Riet. E-mail: jonathan.vantriet{at}wur.nl

Health-promoting messages can be framed in terms of the gains associated with healthy behaviour or the losses associated with unhealthy behaviour. It has been argued that gain-framed messages promoting physical activity (PA) are more effective than loss-framed messages, but empirical findings are inconsistent. Also, no previous studies investigated the effects of gain- and loss-framed messages in the context of a computer-tailored PA intervention. In this study, we provided participants with computer-generated tailored feedback concerning their PA levels. In total, 787 participants entered in the study, of whom 299 completed all measures at a 3-month follow-up. We investigated whether gain- and loss-framed messages promoting PA affected information acceptance, attitude, intention and behaviour differently. The results showed that gain-framed messages resulted in stronger intentions to be physically active than loss-framed messages. This did not result in a significant increase in actual PA, however, as measured by a 3-month follow-up assessment. For information acceptance and attitude, a non-significant advantage of gain-framed messages was found. All effects had small effect sizes. Thus, whereas gain-framed information might be more persuasive than loss-framed information when it comes to promoting PA, the differences between gain- and loss-framed messages are likely to be small.

Received on November 28, 2008; accepted on September 2, 2009


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