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The Baby is Sick/The Baby is Well: A Test of Environmental Communication Appeals
Abstract
The “sick baby” appeal is a common basis for communications in social marketing. The sick baby appeal focuses on the importance of the issue and the severity of the need for help. Ellen et al. (1991) and Fine (1990) proposed that, when concern is already high, a sick baby appeal may reduce perceived consumer effectiveness. They suggested an alternative approach, a “well baby” appeal, which would stress the significance of individual action. Two experiments supported the hypothesis that the effectiveness of these appeals depends on the relative salience of the issue. Further, the results generally supported the proposed processes by which the appeals operate—mediation of perceived concern and perceived consumer effectiveness.
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Citations
Cited by
Green consumers in the 1990s: Profile and implications for advertising
Roberts, J. A. (1996) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/0148-2963(95)00150-6 · Cited by 1,603
Green Consumption: Behavior and Norms
Peattie, K. (2010) · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-032609-094328 · Cited by 964
Atkinson, L., & Rosenthal, S. (2014) · Journal of Advertising · doi:10.1080/00913367.2013.834803 · Cited by 620
Corporate citizenship as a marketing instrument ‐ Concepts, evidence and research directions
Maignan, I., & Ferrell, O. C. (2001) · European Journal of Marketing · doi:10.1108/03090560110382110 · Cited by 549
Roberts, J. A. (1995) · Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice · doi:10.1080/10696679.1995.11501709 · Cited by 396
Metadata
- Authors
- Obermiller, C.
- Venue
- Journal of Advertising
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1995-06
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 55-70
- ISSN
- 0091-3367 (ISSN-L)
- 1557-7805
- OpenAlex
- W2317737724
- Cited by
- 220
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 35.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Baby is Sick/The Baby is Well: A Test of Environmental Communication Appeals. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/00913367.1995.10673476
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- Obermiller, C. (1995). The Baby is Sick/The Baby is Well: A Test of Environmental Communication Appeals. Journal of Advertising. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1995.10673476
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
