Exploring Existential Guilt Appeals in the Context of Charitable Advertisements

This study explores the relationship between existential guilt, inferences of manipulative intent, attitude towards the brand, and donation behaviour intentions. A scale was also developed to measure existential guilt. Although it is exploratory in nature, it fills the gap in the literature that guilt is not a unified construct and should be measured separately. This research found that consumers perceived World Vision’s ad to be non-manipulative and suggested that consumers had a very strong attitude towards the brand. The results implied that advertisers could employ more intensive existential guilt ads for credible brands and potential contributions are also discussed. Background of Guilt in Advertising Guilt appeals in advertising are powerful tools for advertisers due to their persuasive nature (Cotte et al., 2005). According to Lewis (1993), guilt is a motivating, action oriented emotion due to the unambiguous nature of the linkage between feeling of guilt and actions that led to its elicitation. Ghingold (1980) stated that when someone is anticipating the feeling of guilt or feeling guilty, they will attempt to reduce the feeling of guilt by making retributions. This is supported by the Negative State Model and suggested that individuals will seek to reduce these negative emotions (Cialdini and Kenrick, 1976). Therefore, if advertisers can evoke guilt successfully through advertising campaigns, they can offer solutions to minimise the feelings of guilt. The importance of guilt in a social marketing (Alden and Crowley, 1995; Bennett, 1998; Lindsey, 2005; Becheur et al., 2007; Hibbert et al., 2007), marketing communications (Ghingold, 1980; Pinto and Priest, 1991; Ruth and Faber, 1988), and advertising (Coulter and Pinto, 1995; Cotte et al., 2005) has been empirically shown to influence consumer decision making process (Burnett and Lunsford, 1994), ad and brand attitudes (Coulter and Pinto, 1995: Godek and LaBarge, 2006), and donation intentions (Hibbert et al., 2007). While the literature has identified three types of guilt appeals namely; existential, anticipatory, and reactive guilt appeals, researchers have primarily explored guilt appeal as a unified construct (Cotte et al., 2005: Lindsey, 2005: Godek and LaBarge, 2006; Hibbert et al., 2007: Basil et al., 2008). As such, the measurements are not designed to measure each specific type of guilt and there has been a constant call to develop scales for each of these categories (such as Lindsey, 2005). This paper will take the first step to study specific guilt appeals by focussing on the use of existential guilt appeals on charitable donation behaviour. Specifically, it will explore the relationships between existential guilt, attitude towards the brand, inferences of manipulative intent, and donation behaviour intentions. In response to the different dimensions of guilt, this research also explores a potential scale to measure existential guilt.