Exploring Anchoring and Communication Effects from Message Manipulation: An Experimental Study about Recycling

How to change the cognition, attitude and behavior of a target audience toward a public issue that improves the welfare of society is an interesting topic in social marketing. Properly manipulating anchor positions to strengthen communication with a target audience has been demonstrated as an effective approach in commercial marketing. We propose to explore how applying the confirmed commercial marketing model to a specific social marketing issue (i.e., controlling messages with an anchor to influence the evaluations of a target audience about an unknown quantity-the rate of recycling) and to test whether this approach improves the effects of communication meant to adjust attitudes and behaviors toward recycling. Two experiments show that anchored advertising messages significantly change the estimates of a target audience regarding recycling. Advertising messages with high or low anchors motivate subjects to support recycling, but not ostensibly, which is contrary to other behaviors of personal benefit.