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Going viral for a good cause:

Insight into the motivational factors that make health-related campaigns go viral

Master’s thesis By

Edoardo D'Alessandro Student ID: 10609555

Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme in Communication Science

Supervisor: Paul Ketelaar

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Abstract

With the increasing use of SNSs over the last years, viral advertising has become a fundamental marketing strategy that needs to be investigated.

Studies that have been conducted in the context of commercial viral advertising on SNSs are relatively scarce and the field of health related viral advertising in SNSs remains even unexplored.

This study aims to find the main factors that motivate individuals to share health-related viral advertising on SNSs. The conceptual framework proposes six key factors, three social predictors, consumers’ perceived strength of tie between sender and receiver,

frequency of use of the social network site and perceived societal relevance of the problems treated in health-related advertisements, and three attitudinal predictors, attitude toward the advertisement, attitude toward the NGO that produced the advertisement and attitude toward viral messages in general, from which the social factors are expected to predict intentions of pass-on behaviour on a social network site better than attitudinal factors.

A total of 166 Facebook members participated in an online survey, in which they were exposed to a health related viral ad. Subsequently, they were asked to fill in a questionnaire regarding the features that motivated them to forward this specific viral advertisement and viral ads in general.

The results revealed that both social and attitudinal predictors do influence the dependent variable of the present study. However social predictors do not influence the intention to share health-related advertisements significantly more in comparison with attitudinal predictors. Nonetheless, the social factor, perceived societal relevance of the problems treated in health-related advertisements, influenced the intention to pass-on the viral more than any other factor.

In conclusion the present research contributed in giving an insight into which

predictors motivates users to share health related viral advertising, and shed light on a kind of viral advertising never investigated before in the context of SNS. Moreover it helped NGOs in understanding how to realize an effective viral health-related communication.

Future research should continue investigating this type of viral communication upgrading the knowledge that the present study brought to the field.

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Introduction

Nowadays Facebook is the most used social network in the world with over 1.35 billion active users (Dan Noyes, 2014). Every day, with an average time of twenty minutes, 864 million people log onto Facebook and post, share, comment and like content of all kinds (Dan Noyes, 2014). On Facebook people come across all sorts of content, ranging from commercial content with the only aim to entertain to health-related content with high informative purpose. For instance, in order to address the shortage in funds to combat the disease ALS, people passed-along particular viral videos in which friends, relatives or even famous people pour buckets of ice cold water on their head, and then challenge others to do the same. Another current phenomena is seeing photos or videos of males that proudly show their neat and quirky moustache in order to raise funds for men's health issues, such as prostate cancer.

This typology of advertising might be considered the new frontier of health

communication. Over the last couple of years, with the boom of social networks, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) realized that they could take advantage of the high interactivity that these social platforms permit. Social media sites, in fact, “allow health organizations to engage in conversations with consumers through unique interactive features, such as sharing videos and photos, commenting on Facebook, launching pro-social initiatives”(Park, Rodgers & Stemmle, 2011, p.62). In this way “organizations may enhance their promotional activities by entertaining visitors” (Zarrella, 2009, cited by Park, Rodgers & Stemmle., 2011, p.62). The emotionally engaging and interactive nature of these promotional features might allow organizations to raise awareness about the problem they want to treat, getting more participation from users of social media and encouraging discussions among users about issues that are often perceived as really sensitive.

Understanding how to create an effective viral advertising communication is a fundamental issue for NGOs because it is a marketing technique that brings a lot of advantages to them. As confirmed by past literature, viral advertising helps to “increase

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understanding of health information“ (Nutbeam, 2000 cited by Park et al., 2011, p.63),

increases the word of mouth among interpersonal networks (Kalichmann et al., 2002 cited by Park et al., 2011, p.63), and, at the same time, allows NGO’s to disseminate health related advertisements instantly and inexpensively in comparison to the available marketing alternatives ,such as radio, TV, newspapers etc. (Gosselin & Poitras, 2008). Moreover, according to recent statistical facts, in 2012,, sixty percent of the NGOs reported using at least one social media application. Of these, 86.7% had a Twitter account, 56% a Face book account, and 43% a YouTube channel., where, on average, NGOs made one post per day in order to distribute information (Thackeray, Niger, Smith & Van Wagerer, 2012)

Because of the high presence of NGOs on SNS, the great advantages that viral marketing can bring to them and the fact that the success of viral advertising depends on the sharing of the content among users, this research aim to investigate which are the

motivations that lead SNS users to forward health related campaigns.

The present study covers an important scientific valence, insofar as it is the first one to give insight into motivational factors in the context of health related advertising. Past research (Ketelaar, van’t Riet, Vergeer, van Reijmersdal & Crutzen, 2013; van Noort, Antheunis & van Reijmersdal, 2012; Chu, 2011) has investigated the predictors of actual pass-on behaviour of viral advertising communications in the context of social network sites, nevertheless the focus was circumscribed to commercial advertising. Moreover, previous literature on viral communication refers mainly to e-mail format (Eckler, Petya, and Paul Bolls, 2011; Chiu, Hsieh, Kao, Lee, 2007; Phelps, Lewis, Mobilio, Perry & Raman, 2004).

Relying on theory (Dobele, Lindgreen, Beverland, Vanhamme & Van Wijk, 2007; Ketelaar et al., 2013; van Noort et al., 2012; Chu, 2011; Huang, Lin & Lin, 2009), the factors that drive SNS users to share their messages, have been divided into attitudinal and social factors. The first ones are related to the content of the viral advertising message such as the attitude the viewer has toward the advertisement, the brand and viral messages in general. The social factors are related to the social context in which the message is received, such as

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whom send the message, the strength of the relationship between sender and receiver, the attitude the viewer has toward social networks.

The study of Ketelaar et al. (2013) was the first that computed and compared the two categories of factors, attitudinal and social, in order to understand which one had more influence on the actual pass on behaviour of viral advertisements in SNS. The experiment revealed interesting findings, showing that pass-on behaviour of commercial campaigns is more strongly influenced by attitudinal predictors than social predictors. Nevertheless, these results could be due to the commercial nature of the campaign used as stimuli.

Because of the non-commercial, serious nature of health related advertising the present study hypothesizes a complete opposite direction from the findings of the research conducted by Ketelaar et al. (2013). In fact, it is expected that social factors will be more important than attitudinal factors in predicting intentions to forward a health-related campaign This hypothesis is due to two main reasons. The first reason is related to the issues treated in health related advertising. The topics covered in these advertisements have a high societal valence. Individuals could be more stimulated in sharing these topics in order to inform their friends. Raising awareness for problems that are perceived to be relevant for their friends is hypothesized to be of greater influence on the user's decision to share the message than the attitude the user has toward the advertisement itself. The second reason is related to the informative purpose of health related advertising. Raising awareness and informing people about serious and private topics require a trustworthiness source. If the information is sent by close friends people will be more likely to share the advertisement with others because they trust and know the sender. Consequently in the SNS system, based on the social

connections between peers, tie strength between sender and receiver of the information will have more influence than an attitudinal factors.

The hypothesis that social factors have greater influence than attitudinal predictors on intentions to forward health-related advertisements is really important to investigate because, if confirmed, it will indicate that brands and NGOs have to adopt different approaches and techniques in order to make their advertisements effective and viral. This would mean that

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while brands should focus more on the intrinsic characteristics of the message, non-governmental organizations should put their efforts to the social context in which the message is spread. In this way, findings of this research could improve the knowledge of NGOs in order to help them make their awareness campaign effective.

Theoretical framework

Definiton of virality

The expression ‘viral’ is a new term, born with the digital age, that researchers tried to define recently, improving the definition year after year. Past research studied viral messages only from a commercial point of view, the so called “viral advertising”. The most updated definition by Eckler and Rodgers (2010) cited by Eckler & Bolls (2011, p.2) has been "persuasive messages by an identified sponsor distributed through unpaid communication among peers on interactive digital platforms.” This unpaid communication among peers is what, in SNS platforms, is called “sharing” or “forwarding”. Recent studies about viral advertising on SNSs and on e-mail formats defined this “passing on behaviour” as the dimension that identifies the effectiveness of a viral message (Gomez, 2014). A viral video is not defined only by the total amount of views it reached, but more specifically by the process of mass-sharing that has occurred across social networks that has led to the total amount of views reached. Therefore, the sharing process itself is an essential component of viral

videos. (Porter & Golan, 2006; Eckler & Bolls, 2011; Gomez, 2014). The number of views is a fundamental feature but viral videos are mainly designed in order to be shared not just to be viewed (Gomez, 2014; Porter & Golan, 2006), the more a message is shared the more it becomes viral. The “passing on” variable has been studied in different ways over the past years by different researchers both in the e-mail and SNS context: by measuring the actual passing-on behaviour (Ketelaar et al., 2013) or by measuring the intentions that users have to forward the message (van Noort, 2012; Heckler & Bolls,2011; Chu, 2011; Chiu et al.,

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2007). The present research studied which motivations lead users to increase their intention to forward the message and not their actual pass on behaviour.

Characteristics of a viral message

Viral communication can be used as a commercial marketing technique by brands and companies. However NGOs refer to viral advertising with the only aim to inform and raise awareness about certain problems (Phelps et al., 2004).

The common points between the two types of promotional communication

(commercial vs. health related) are the main features that the message have to contain in order to become “viral”. Despite the intent of the message, research on viral advertising (Eckler & Bolls, 2011; Porter & Golan, 2006) showed that in order to become viral, a

message has to be emotionally engaging. It has to raise strong emotions in the viewer. Past literature (Teixeira, 2012; Dobele et al., 2007; Gomez, 2014) suggested that there are some compulsory emotions that a viral video has to evoke in the viewer in order to be passed along. Six primary emotions were especially investigated by researchers in both the email and viral context: surprise, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust and rage (Elkman 1972 in Dobele et al., 2007). Findings (Teixeira, 2012; Dobele et al., 2007; Gomez, 2014) showed that “surprise” is an emotion that a video always has to generate in order to be shared . However the majority of viral videos studied have shown to evoke more than a single

emotion in the viewer. Relying on past literature (Teixeira, 2012; Dobele et al., 2007; Gomez, 2014), the chances that a video will be shared and “goes viral” are enhanced when surprise is combined with one of the five primary emotions remained. For example past research showed that, in viral marketing, the majority of viral advertisements combines the two emotions of “surprise” and “happiness” (Teixeira, 2012; Dobele et al., 2007; Gomez, 2014).

However, the topic concerning which emotions a viral video has to generate in order to be shared has received only limited empirical attention and mainly referred to commercial viral advertising.

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The present study will use a real engaging and emotional health-related campaign which aims at surprising the viewer and that has been pretested on the emotions it has to generate. The aim is to understand which emotions health-related advertisements have to evoke in the viewers in order to be shared with their peers.

Determinants of the intention to forward health-related messages

Only three researches have studied the determinants of the intention to forward viral messages in the context of social networks (van Noort et al., 2012; Ketelaar, et al 2013; Chu, 2011) while the majority investigated these predictors in the e-mail context (Eckler & Bolls, 2011; Chiu et al., 2007; Phelps, 2004). Consequently the present research will rely especially on the first three studies (Ketelaar et al.,2013; van Noort et al., 2012; Chu, 2011) in order to find support for the hypotheses. The literature proposes a distinction between two main categories of predictors, one concerning social factors and the other one concerning

attitudinal factors. Attitudinal factors are explained as the predictors related to the content of the viral message. Ketelaar et al. (2013) identified three of them: attitude toward the

advertisement, attitude toward the brand, and attitude toward the viral advertising. On the other side social factors are explained as predictors related to the social context in which the message is spread. Three main social factors can be identified in past studies (van Noort et al., 2012) : the sender of the advertisement, the strength of the relationship between sender and receiver and the frequency of SNS use.

The conceptual framework of the present study, analyses these two categories of predictors while modifying the characteristics of some of the factors used. The three social factors studied are: consumers’ perceived strength of tie between sender and receiver, frequency of use of the social network site and perceived societal relevance of the problems treated in health-related advertisements. The three attitudinal factors studied are: attitude toward the viral health related ad, attitude toward viral advertising in general and attitude toward the NGO that produced the advertisement.

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Differently from the study from Ketelaar et al. (2013) the Attitude toward the brand predictor has not been used in the present study, because in health-related communication there is no commercial intent, on consequences there are no brands sending the message. The predictor used in the present research is Attitude toward the NGO.

Moreover, differently from past literature (Ketelaar et al., 2013; van Noort et al., 2012) a new social predictor has been introduced: perceived societal relevance of the problems treated in health-related advertisements. This dimension has been derived from literature concerning precursors of pro-social behaviour (Poppelaars, 2014) because it is hypothesized to be a type of social predictor that better motivates the pass-on behaviour in the context of health related advertising.

The six predictors of pass-on behaviour selected are the ones on which the hypotheses of the present study will be based.

Attitudinal predictors

The first attitudinal predictor that is hypothesized to have an influence on the intention to forward the message is the attitude toward the health-related advertisement. Findings of past literature regarding e-mail context (Eckler & Bolls, 2011; Chiu et al., 2007; Phelps et al., 2004) and SNS (Ketelaar et all, 2013; Chu, 2011) showed that the more the attitude toward the advertisement is positive the more the user will be likely to forward the message. The only research that studied this variable in the context of SNSs focused on the effect of predictors on actual pass-on behaviour and not on the user’s intentions to forward the message. For this reason it is hypothesized that the effect will be the same concerning the user’s intention to forward the message:

H1: The more positive the users’ attitude toward the health-related advertisement is, the higher are the intentions to forward the campaign.

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The second attitudinal predictor that is hypothesized to have an influence on the intention to forward the message is the attitude toward the viral advertising in general. Past literature support the idea that the more positive the attitude toward the viral advertising is, the more positive the intentions to forward the message ( Chu, 2011) and the actual pass-on behaviour (Ketelaar et al. , 2013) will be. Here the motivation that leads the user to share the message is the mere pleasure of receiving and sharing content on social networks.

Consequently the second hypothesis is:

H2: The more positive the attitude toward the viral advertising is, the more positive are the intentions to forward the message .

The third attitudinal predictor that is hypothesized to have an influence on the intention to forward the message is the attitude toward the NGO that produced the advertisement. Past literature only studied this variable in a commercial context.

Consequently the dimension used in this study refers to attitude toward the brand. Health-related communication doesn’t contain a commercial intent, consequently there are no brands sending the message. In light of this the present study cannot find support for the theory in past literature. However, it's hypothesized that attitude toward the NGO that produced the advertisement. should have the same influence as attitude toward the brand, on the intentions to share the advertisement Past findings concerning the only research that studied brand attitude in relation to viral advertising, (Ketelaar et al. 2013) reported that consumers are more likely to pass on an advertisement to others in a SNS context when their attitudes toward the advertised brand is positive. The present study hypothesizes then that:

H3: The more positive the attitude toward the NGO is, the more positive are the intentions to forward the message .

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Social Predictors

The first social predictor that is hypothesized to have an influence on the intention to forward the message is the perceived societal relevance of the problems treated in health-related advertisements. According to the Theory of Reasoned Action by Fishbein and Azjen (1991), individuals can be highly influenced in their behaviour by social norms. Moreover “research on precursors of pro-social behaviour has indicated that an individual’s social environment might influence an individual’s tendencies to behave pro-socially” ( Poppelaars, 2014, p.9) where behaving pro-socially can be defined as “Voluntary, intentional actions that result in benefits for another person or society at large” (Mares & Woodard, 2005 cited by Poppelaars, 2014, p.5). Relying on this theory and regarding the high societal valence of the problems treated in health-related viral messages, it is expected that users that perceive the problem treated in the content of the viral message as highly important for society (and consequentially for their peers) will be more willing to behave pro-socially. This means that users might be more willing to share the message for moral and ethical reasons, because they might feel committed to the pressure of a social norm: “if it’s important for my friends and for the society, it’s important that I share it with the others”. In light of these theories is hypothesized that:

H4: The more users perceive the problem treated in the viral message as important for society and their peers, the more their intention to forward the message increases.

The second social predictor that is hypothesized to have an influence on the intention to forward the message is frequency of use of the SNS in question. Past literature regarding passing online content on the internet in general (not on a specific platform) showed that the amount of time spent online is positively related to the actual pass on behaviour (Ho &

Dempsey, 2010). On the other side the research by Ketelaar et al. (2013) on SNS did not find a significant relationship between time spent on the social network and the pass-on

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behaviour. Despite of this, some research concerning the influence that media usage can have on consumers behaviour (Mares & Woodard, 2005) demonstrated that media usage can affect the behaviour of individuals positively. This theory can be explained through the use of the General Learning Model (GLM). This model explains that the way in which individuals behave in a specific situation is due to the way in which they interpret and perceive that specific situation. This perception can change from individual to individual based on his personal characteristics and on situational variables presented at the moment (Mares & Woodard, 2005). One example of these situational variables could be the media exposure. This means that media exposure may influence the way in which an individual interprets a specific situation.

In particular “exposure to pro-social media content might result in positive behavioural outcomes” (Mares & Woodard, 2005, cited by Poppelaars, 2014, p.7). Consequently if an individual is exposed to a pro social media content he will be influenced in behave pro socially. Therefore, the more time a user spend on SNS, the more possibilities he or she has to be exposed to pro-social media content. These will enhance the chances that he will be influenced to have pro social behavioural outcomes, that in this case are translated into intentions to forward the advertisement.

Relying on this, the fourth hypothesis of the present study is:

H5: The more time the users spend on SNS the higher are their intentions to forward the health-related viral message.

The third social predictor that is hypothesized to have an influence on the intention to forward the message is the strength of tie between the sender and the receiver. Past

literature has rarely investigated this dimension in the context of SNS (Ketelaar et al.,2013; van Noort et al., 2012) while this has been studied in the context of e-mails (Chiu et al. 2007; Huang et all, 2009) and eWoM (Phelps et al., 2004). The strength of this relationship can be explained by two dimensions: the “closeness” between two peers, or the intensity of their

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relationship, and the frequency of contacts between them (Marsden & Campbell, 1984). Both in the e-mail and SNS studies, findings confirm the fact that individuals tend to not take in consideration and then forward email messages that are not received from someone they know and trust (Park et all 2011, Chiu et all, 2007 Huang et all, 2009). Furthermore people are more inclined to forward the message if received from a strong tie because it is perceived as similar to them and consequentially trustworthy (Ketelaar et al.,2013; van Noort et al., 2012). In the present study, it is expected that tie strength will strongly affect the intention to forward the advertisement, because of the serious and sensitive nature of the topics treated in health related advertising. Individuals could feel safer in receiving and forwarding these types of private content if they receive it from someone that know and trust

H6: The stronger the connection between two ties is , the higher the tie’s intentions to forward the message are.

Attitudinal or social predictors?

As stated in the paragraphs above, only three studies in the past literature have investigated which are the most influential determinants of the intention to forward a viral message on social networks. While the research by van Noort et al. (2012) and Chu (2011) focused especially on social factors, the one of Ketelaar et al. (2013) made a comparison between the two predictor categories (attitudinal and social) in order to understand which one was the most influential in stimulating passing on behaviour on SNS. Findings clearly showed that attitudinal factors affected the actual pass-on behaviour more than social factors.

Nevertheless this could be due to the commercial nature of the viral advertisements that were studied. The present research, with the different nature of promotional communication investigated in mind, hypothesizes an opposite result from the findings of Ketelaar et al. (2013) .This different direction of the hypothesis is due to two main reasons.

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First, the societal relevance of the topics treated in health related advertising. Users could feel more motivated in passing along the advertisement because they perceive the importance that spreading the message and informing others about a relevant problem have, more than because they enjoyed the advertisement itself. It is expected that the relevance of the information given in the message outweighs the characteristics of the advertisement. Moreover, users that share the ad, could feel motivated because they contribute in raising awareness about a specific problem among their peers.

The second aspect that leads to expect an opposite direction from the findings in the commercial context is the high informative purpose of the health-related advertisements. When the goal is to inform others, especially about content so private and serious in nature, the trustworthiness of the source gains higher importance than when the goal is to entertain. People are more likely to trust the information and consequently share it sooner if sent by a close friend than an acquaintance (van Noort et al. , 2012). While tie strength was found to influence pass-on behaviour also in the context of commercial viral advertising on SNS, in health-related advertising it is expected to gain more valence regarding the sensitivity of the topics treated. The need of trustworthiness is expected to be higher when the information given has high societal relevance and concerns health issues than when it is about commercial characteristics of specific products.

Finally, attitudinal factors are also expected to have an influence on the intentions to forward the advertisement. However this influence is expected to be weaker than the social predictors. Therefore the attitudinal predictors that have been found to have an influence on pass-on behavior of commercial viral advertising in the research of Ketelaar et al. (2013) are expected to remain significant in the field of health-related advertisement but to weigh less on intentions to forward the advertisement.

Relying on these expectations it is hypothesized that:

H7: Social factors are more influential than attitudinal factors in stimulating passing-on behaviour on SNS when it comes to health related and charity campaigns.

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Methods Pre-test

Before the online survey took place a pre-test was conducted. The aim was to find out, among four videos chosen from a famous website that contains popular viral videos (ViralFriday.com), which one was the most emotionally engaging and, consequentially, had more viral dissemination potential.

In order to conduct the pre-test, 44 participants who did not take part in the final experiment, were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 videos and were asked to rate it. The contacts were approached by a Facebook message containing a link that automatically redirected them to a Qualtrics survey.

The content of the four videos involved different topics. However all 4 stimuli had common points: the non-commercial nature and the kind of emotions evoked.

Seeing the problematic and discomforting nature of the arguments treated in health-related campaigns, the present study proposed videos that evoked mainly negative

emotions. A past study by Dobele et al. (2007) highlighted the fact that negative emotions such as sadness, fear and anger “can be used effectively to encourage support for the viral marketing campaigns of charitable organizations”. Consequentially the content of the four stimuli chosen in order to conduct the pre-test contained the 5 primary emotions: sadness, fear, rage, disgust and surprise.

The ratings of the videos were given on nine point scales evaluating 5 items representing the emotions listed above ( surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger).

In the questionnaire people were also asked whether the participants saw the video in the past. This question was used as a condition. If a video was scaled as high emotionally engaging but was seen by 40% of the participants or more, it was excluded. For this reason the four videos chosen did not come from internationally famous or well-known organizations in order to avoid excluding too many participants from the real experiment. Finally,

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viewer. This is an important aspect to investigate because if the content is considered offensive there is the possibility that users don’t forward the message to their peers.

In order to find the most emotionally engaging stimulus, the videos were sorted based on the amount of surprise they evoked. Seen the fact that ” surprise” is the fundamental emotion that a viral video has to evoke, (Teixeira, 2012; Dobele et al., 2007; Gomez, 2014) the two stimuli with higher ratings on surprise were compared. Among these two, one video was selected as stimulus for the online survey, the video that combined surprise with the other primary emotion that received the highest rating.

Results showed that among the four videos that were chosen, none was perceived as offensive by viewers. Moreover the first and the second advertisement had been seen

respectively by the 54% and 20% of respondents before the pretest was conducted. On the contrary the third and the fourth videos hadn’t been seen by any respondent and reported the highest values on surprise (M Surprise video 3 = 4.82, SD=2.14 ; M Surprise video 4 = 4.91,

SD=2.17). The video chosen as stimulus for the online survey was video 4 because it combined the highest ratings on surprise with the primary emotion that received the highest ratings among all the four videos: sadness (MSadness video 4 =6.27, SD=1.55).

Design

The present study used a quantitative research in the form of an online survey in which participants were exposed to one stimulus and filled out a questionnaire afterwards. This design has been chosen because surveys are effective when a large number of variable have to be analyzed. Furtermore surveys provide high reliability in their results because participants are exposed to the same standardazed stimulus

Sample

The present study focuses on intention to forward viral advertisements among

members of the SNS Facebook. Relying on statistical facts, people between 25 and 34 years old are the ones that use Facebook the most (Dan Noyes, 2014). In light of this a

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convenience sample was used in order to reach participants with the age characteristics mentioned above. A convenience sample of 50 adults taken from the Facebook account of the researcher was, then, initially exposed to the online survey. Moreover, the participants were asked to forward the survey to their friends. In this way, a snowball sampling technique was used in order to set up the online survey sample. The choice to use this technique was based on two main reasons. The first one concern the use of the tie strength variable. If the experiment was conducted only among friends of the researcher, the measure of strength of tie should have been biased. The second reason is due to the characteristic of the context we want to study in the present research: viral advertising in social network. The snowball sampling help to create a realistic setting in order to conduct the online survey.

Procedure

Participants were recruited through Facebook’s private messages, by including a link and a short message in which their participation was requested for an online study about health related advertising in order to help the researcher graduating. No further information was given in order to avoid awareness of the people engaged in the experiment. Moreover, they were asked to share, if possible, the message to other contacts of their Facebook networks. By opening the link, participants were redirected to the online Qualtrics form in which the online survey took place. At first, participants were asked to look at the video advertisement as long as they wanted. After being exposed to the stimulus material participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided in 4 main blocks. The first one contained a brief introduction to the survey, the viral advertisement and a question asking whether participants had been exposed to the advertisement prior to the survey. The second and third one contained respectively all the questions concerning the attitudinal factors and the social factors. Finally the fourth one was composed by questions asking about demographic characteristics. The question concerning the dependent variable of the present study, intention to forward the viral advertisement, was placed between the first and the second block in order to not create a bias. In this way it’s possible to avoid the

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risk that all the measures concerning the independent variables (block 2 and block 3) could influence the answers regarding the dependent variable. Moreover the last question of the first block was used as a condition. If respondents answered to have been exposed to the stimulus in the past, they were automatically redirected to the last block concerning the demographic questions, without being asked about social and attitudinal factors.

At the end of the survey respondents were thanked for their participation. For ethical reasons a debriefing activity was sent via email to the participants who asked for it during the study, with the aim of informing them about the results of the present research.

Material

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LagGSTiSnto

“The video is a campaign launched by NSPCC ( English charity organization) with the slogan “Don’t wait until you’re certain”. The aim of the campaign is to ask the public not to ignore child’s safety and to contact them before it might be too late. The video itself is based on the typical idea of funny/stupid things that children can say, but through the seconds it reveals the message and hopefully makes people realize that it’s not that funny anymore. It can be that there is reason behind children’s words. So “Don’t wait until you’re certain” (Viralfriday.com).

Measures

Intention to forward. This is the dependent variable of the present research and measures the intention of the respondent to forward the advertisement in his network. The forwarding intention is operationalized according to the research of Eckler & Bolls (2011). Respondents were asked to rate ,on a seven-point scale, how much they agree with the two statement “In real life i would have the intent to forward this campaign to connections in my network’ “ and “This ad is worth sharing with others”. The sum of the scores of these two

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statements will compose the intention to forward variable. The reliability test conducted on the scale showed a Cronbach's α = .624.

Attitude toward the advertisement. In order to measure participants’ attitude toward the viral advertisement a five item five-point bipolar scale is used. According to Mitchell & Olson (1981) attitude towards the advertisement can be predicted by asking respondents to rate 4 different items: “Good/Bad”; “Like/Dislike”; “Irritating/Not Irritating”; “Interesting/Not interesting”. One more item, taken from the scale used by Van Noort et al. (2012) in his study, has been added. This item asked respondents to rate the originality of the

advertisement. This item has been included regarding the nature of viral advertising that have to be engaging and shocking. Originality is a characteristic that can help a viral advertisement to create shock in the respondents. The final scale resulted to have high reliability (Cronbach's α =.746)

Attitude toward viral advertising in general. The scale that was used is an adaptation by Chu (2011) of a scale developed by Muehling (1987). According to Chu (2011) attitude towards the viral advertising can be predicted by asking respondents to rate three seven-point semantic differential items: “Good/Bad”, “Negative/Positive”, “Favorable/Unfavorable.. The final scale resulted to have high reliability (Cronbach's α =.889).

Attitude toward NGO. The attitude toward the NGO is operationalized according to the research of Dean (2002). Respondents were asked to answer ,on a seven-point scale, how much they agreed with four statement concerning the organization that manages the charity. The sum of the scores of these 4 statements will compose the attitude toward NGO variable. The scale resulted to have high reliability ( Cronbach's α =.957).

Perceived societal relevance of the problems treated in health-related advertisement. In order to develop this scale, an adaptation of a scale by van Noort et al. (2012) measuring Campaign relevance, is used. Differently from the present study, in the research conducted by van Noort et al. (2012) this variable defined the relevance that the campaign had for the

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respondent, depending on the strength of tie he had with the sender. According van Noort et al. (2011) campaign relevance can be predicted by asking respondents to rate two seven-point semantic differential items: “Irrelevant/Relevant”, “Unimportant/Important”. The sum of the scores of these two items will compose the final variable. The scale resulted to have high reliability (Cronbach's α =.870).

Frequency use of SNS use. The frequency use is operationalized according to the research of Rosen et al. (2013). Respondents were asked to answer how much time they spend on Facebook on a daily basis.

Strength of tie. This variable measures the strength of tie between the sender and the receiver of the advertisement. According to past literature, there are two main indicators that define tie strength. (Marsden and Campbell 1984) The first one is the closeness of

relationship between sender and receiver. The second one is the frequency of interaction between the two. These two dimensions are operationalized according with the scales used by Ketelaar et al. (2013) in his research. Regarding the indicator of closeness , participants are asked to rate on a 5-point scale the perceived strength of tie with the person that sent them the advertisement. Concerning the second dimension of amount of time spent between sender and receiver, participants are asked to indicate on a 5-point scale the frequency of contact with the sender. The sum of the scores of these two items will compose the Tie strength variable. The scale resulted to have high reliability ( Cronbach's α =.727).

Demographics. Three questions regarding age, gender and monthly income of the participants has been used in order to gain a better understanding of the sample

characteristics.

Analysis

Initially all the variables composed by more than one item were computed, combining these items into average scales. Consequentially in order to conduct the analysis of the hypotheses, a multiple regression has been used twice. The first time including all the

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independent variables in one block in order to see the influence that each factor had on the intentions to forward the ad (testing H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6). Moreover two new variables has been created. The first one adding up the values collected by the social factors. The second adding up the values collected by the attitudinal factors. These two new variables have been entered in a multiple regression with the" intentions to forward the ad" in order to see which one had more influence on the dependent variable and consequentially testing H7. Finally, according to Paternoster et al. (1998), a specific formula (Z = (b1 – b2) / (SquareRoot ((SEb1²)+(Seb2²)))) was used In order to find whether the difference between the two regression coefficients was significant

Results

Descriptives

The data collection of the present study took place as planned. The first 50

respondents, contacted directly by the researcher among his Facebook friends, agreed to participate without any problems and collaborated in order to share the survey to other users within their networks.

The entire sample consisted of 166 Facebook contacts gathered over a period of 2 weeks during December 2014. Analysing the statistical data collected, we noticed that all the 166 contacts were able to open the survey link and agreed to participate to the experiment. However 46 of them, apparently, did not answer to the questionnaire. Among the 120 participants that successfully completed the survey, 6 of them (5%) indicated that they just saw the advertisement and were therefore excluded from the study answering only the demographics questions .

The final sample (table 1.) was composed by a majority of male participants (57,5%) with an average age of 25,5 years old (SD= 3.88). The characteristics of the sample did not differ too much from the average characteristics of the Facebook's users that are aged between 25 and 34 years and where there are slightly more females (53%) than males (47%)

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(Dan Noyes, 2014). Moreover the sample was composed mainly by Italians (66) while the other respondent’s nationality was equally distributed (9 Dutch, 8 Greeks, 9 Germans etc.).

Concerning the question related to the monthly income, 16 participants decided not to answer, probably due to the private nature of the information. Among the 104 respondents that agreed to report their income, the majority (65) answered to earn less than 1000 euros per month while 27 answered to earn between 1000 and 1500 per month (M=1,70; SD= 1.34).

The results concerning the nationality and the monthly income are in line with the expectations of the present study because the convenience sample was composed mainly by Italian students.

The video chosen as the stimulus for the online survey resulted to have high

dissemination potential showing an high mean score on the variable intention to forward the advertisement (M=4,84; SD= 1.33). Furthermore the participants reported a positive attitude toward the advertisement (M=3,97; SD= .70) the viral advertising in general (M=4,29; SD= 1.64) and extremely positive attitude toward the NGO (M=5,47; SD= 1.18). The problem treated in the advertisement has been perceived as relevant for the society (M=4,38; SD= 1.43).

Finally, participants reported to pass, on average , between 31 minutes to 2 hours per day on Facebook.(M=3,47; SD= 1.23).

Table 1

Demographic characteristics, intention to forward, social predictors and attitudinal predictors for the overall sample

Mean Standard deviation N

Gender 0.43 0.49 120

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Monthly income 1.71 1.34 104

Intention to forward 4.89 1.32 114

Attitude toward the advetsement

3.97 070 114

Attitude toward the NGO 5.47 1.18 114

Attitude toward viral advertising in general

4.29 1.64 114

Frequency use of SNS 3.47 1.23 114

Tie strenght 2.92 1.05 114

Perceived societal relevance of the problem

4.38 1.43 114

Testing of hypotheses

In order to test the first six hypotheses a multiple linear regression has been

conducted. The analysis showed that the regression model is significant F(6, 107) = 10.91, p< .05). Looking at the Adjusted R² it is possible to notice that the proportion of variance in the dependent variable which can be explained by the independent variables is 35% (Table 2). Moreover, concerning the influence of the predictors on the dependent variable, different results were found for each hypothesis.

With regard to attitudinal predictors analysis showed that the more positive is the attitude toward viral advertising in general (H2) and the more positive is the attitude toward the NGO (H3) the higher is the intention to forward the advertisement. However a non-significant relationship has been found between attitude toward the advertisement (H1) and intentions to forward the advertisement. Looking at the coefficients table (Tab 2), it is possible to notice that: Attitude toward viral marketing, b* = 0.24, t = 2.84, p< .05, 95% CI [0.06,0.33] and Attitude toward NGO , b* = 0.18, t = 2.18, p< .05, 95% CI [0.02,0.39], have a weak effect on intentions to forward the advertising while Attitude toward the advertisement, b* = 0.07, t =

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.766, p>.05, 95% CI [-1.13,1.67], does not have a significant influence. Relying on these results it is possible to confirm H2 and H3 while the first hypothesis (H1) has been rejected.

Regarding social factors analysis showed that the only predictor that has a significant influence on the dependent variable is Perceived importance of the problem for the peers. This means that the higher the perceived importance of the problem treated in the

advertisement for the peers (H4) the higher is the intention to forward the advertisement. Concerning the other two social predictors, a non significant relationship with the dependent variable has been found for both frequency use of SNS (H5) and tie strength (H6). Looking at the coefficients table (Tab 2.), it is possible to notice that: Perceived societal relevance of the problem , b* = 0.36, t = 4.55, p < .05, 95% CI [0.19,0.47] has a moderate effect on intentions to forward the advertising while Frequency use of SNS, b* = 0.11, t = 1.32, p> .05, 95% CI [-0.06,0.28] and tie strength , b* = 0.09, t = 1.05, p>.05, 95% CI [-0.09,0.31], do not have a significant influence. Relying on these results it is possible to confirm H4 while H5 and H6 has been rejected.

Table 2.

First multiple regression model summary

Model 1 b* Constant --- Ad attitude 0.07 NGO attitude 0.18 * ViralAd attitude 0.24 ** Frecuency use of SNS 0.11 Tie strenght 0.09 Perceived importance of the problem 0.36 *** Adjusted R2 .35 F 10.91*** Note. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.

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A second multiple regression has been run in order to test H7. The seventh

hypothesis state that social factors are more influential than attitudinal factors in stimulating passing on behaviour on SNS of health related and charity campaigns .

The overall model was significant F(2, 111) = 30.09, p< .05 . Moreover the Adjusted R² value showed that the proportion of variance in the dependent variable which can be

explained by the social and attitudinal predictors is 35% (Table 3).

In particular, the analysis showed that social factors, b* = 0.364, t = 4.491, p<.05, 95% CI [0.12,0.30] have a slightly stronger significant influence on the dependent variable in comparison with attitudinal factors, b* = 0.363, t = 4.475, p<.05, 95% CI [0.10,0.26]. However before accepting or rejecting H7 a specific formula (Z = (b1 – b2) / (SquareRoot

((SEb1²)+(Seb2²)))), according to Paternoster et al. (1998), has been used in order to study whether the difference between the two regression coefficients was significant.

Calculation showed that the difference between the two regression coefficients of social and attitudinal predictors was not significant ( Z= .873, p< 1.67). Therefore, although the regression coefficients found for social and attitudinal factors were in the expected direction, the two predictor categories appeared to differ not significantly in influencing the dependent variable. In light of this it is possible to reject H7.

Table 3.

Second multiple regression model summary

Model 2 b* Constant --- Social predictor 0.364*** Attitudinal predictors 0.363 *** Adjusted R2 .35 F 30.09*** Note. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.

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Control variables

In order to verify if there was a significant correlation between intention to forward the advertisement and the variable of gender and age, a Pearson's correlation coefficient was conducted. Results showed that there wasn’t a significant correlation with intention to forward for both gender (r= .14, p= .131) and age (r= .10, p= .292) . Moreover a Spearman's Rho correlation coefficient was conducted in order to see if there was a significant correlation among “monthly income” and intentions to forward the advertisement. Results showed a non-significant correlation between these two variables ( rs= -.08, p= .410). In light of the results obtained, there was no need to control for these three variables in our analysis.

Overview of the hypotheses

Summarizing the findings of the present study it is possible to notice that only three

hypotheses were confirmed ( H2, H3, H4) while all the other four were rejected (H1, H5, H6, H7). The predictors that appeared to significantly influence intentions to forward health-related advertisements were two attitudinal and one social factor: Attitude toward viral

advertising in general, Attitude toward NGO and Perceived importance of the problem for the peers.

Discussion & conclusions

The aim of the present study was to investigate which are the main factors that lead individuals to share health-related viral advertising on SNS.

Findings revealed that social predictors influenced the intentions to forward the advertisement slightly more than attitudinal predictors. However this difference in influencing the dependent variable appeared to be very small and was not considered to be significant.

This finding leads us to reject the expectation that the type of viral message

(commercial vs. health-related) determines which category of predictors is more influential in stimulating pass on behaviour of viral advertisements. We did not find, in fact, an added

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effect of social factors even when using a viral that was supposed to incite the category of social predictors more. On the contrary the two categories of predictors appeared to be equally important in influencing the intentions to forward the health-related advertisements. This result made us infer that there is not a category itself that is most influential in

stimulating pass-on behaviour of an health-related advertisement. However there are individual factors that can significantly influence the intentions to forward the advertisement, despite the category to which they belong to. In particular, one social factor appeared to be the most influential among all predictors in motivating users to forward the viral

advertisement: Perceived societal relevance of the problems treated in health-related advertisement. This factor was not derived from earlier research into the determinant of viral advertising., but from adjacent literature concerning precursors of pro-social behaviour (Poppelaars, 2014). This leads us not to question if social factors are more important than attitudinal factors when people are exposed to health-related virals, but whether the social factors investigated in earlier research are the right factors.

Concerning the most influential variable of the present study, this finding is in line with what was expected in H4. Seen the high societal valence of the issues treated in health related advertisement , people are more willing to forward the message when they perceive that the problem exposed is of high importance for their peers. This variable might be the dimension that more differentiates health-related communication from commercial

advertising. While commercial advertising are mainly shared because of the characteristics and the content of the advertisement itself (Ketelaar et al, 2013), health related messages are mainly shared because the information they convey is perceived to be important enough to be shared in the social context. This is in line with the purpose of NGOs, that want to raise awareness in people about certain problems that most of the time are underestimated by individuals, trying to make them understand that these are important issues that have to be faced by everyone and by the entire society. This line of reasoning is also reflected in the advertisement used as a stimulus in the present research. The focus, was on a problem that is often under estimated, listening to what children have to say and how they feel,

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highlighting the fact that there could be a reason behind children's words and that we do not have to ignore them because childcare’ is a relevant problem for everybody.

With regard to the other two social predictors, the variables of frequency use of SNS and tie strength did not show a significant effect on the dependent variable of the present study. Concerning frequency use of SNS results are not in line with past literature regarding passing along online content on the internet in general where findings showed that the amount of time spent online is positively related to the actual pass on behaviour (Ho & Dempsey, 2010). However in the only research that investigated this variable in the context of SNS (Ketelaar et al., 2013), pass-on behaviour of viral commercial advertisements appeared to not be significantly affected by the amount of time spent on the social network. This demonstrates that the time spent on SNS does not predict both the intention to forward and the pass on behaviour of viral messages, regardless of their nature (commercial vs. health-related). Furthermore this finding is in line with the research of Ketelaar et al. (2013) on commercial viral advertising on SNS.

Focusing on the tie strength variable , results of the present research are completely in the opposite direction of what was expected. Findings showed a non-significant influence of this variable on the intention to forward the advertisement while past literature, both in the e-mail (Park et al 2011; Chiu et al, 2007; Huang et all, 2009) and SNS studies(Ketelaar et al.,2013; van Noort et al., 2012), suggested that receiving contents by people you have a strong relationship with, leads to being more willing to consider and then forward the message to others. This relation is due to the fact that people perceive close friends as similar to them and consequentially trustworthy. The non-significant results encountered in the present research concerning this variable, could have been due to the non-realistic setting in which the online survey has been conducted. In previous research (Ketelaar et el., 2013; van Noort et al., 2012), regarding viral advertising on SNS, real campaigns were disseminated on social networks without mentioning that there was a study behind. Subsequently participants where approached after a few weeks in order to fulfil an online survey. In the present research Individuals were approached by private mails in which they

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were asked to participate in an online study about health related advertising in order to help the researcher graduate. Moreover the viral advertisement was placed inside the online survey. Making users aware that the aim of the participation was an online study could have biased the participants. When exposed to an informational advertisement, users need a trustworthy source in order to believe the information and consequently share it to others. This need of trust is due to the fact that people are not aware about the purpose of the sender of the information. They may ask themselves whether do they have to believe the information conveyed in the message or not. In the present research, once participants discovered why they were asked to look at that specific video, they did not need to trust the information conveyed anymore. They did not pay attention anymore whether the information was trustworthy or not in order to decide if they were willing to share the advertisement to other users. They probably based their choice to forward the advertisement on other factors, such as the likeability of the advertisement. This might be the reason why the variable tie strength did not result to have a significant influence on intention to forward the message. Consequently H6 had to be rejected.

Focusing on the attitudinal factors investigated, only two of them appeared to

significantly influence the intentions to forward the advertisement. In particular attitude toward viral advertising in general and attitude toward the NGO appeared to have a significant small range effect size on the dependent variable. These findings are in line with past literature for both variables. Concerning Attitude toward viral advertising in general the idea, found both in e-mail and SNSs context by past researches (Chu, 2011; Ketelaar et al., 2013), is that the more positive the attitude toward viral advertising is, the more positive the intentions to forward the message ( Chu, 2011) and the actual pass on behaviour (Ketelaar et all, 2013) will be.

Concerning attitude toward the NGO, findings go in the same direction of the findings encountered in past studies regarding commercial viral advertising in SNS (Ketelaar et al. 2013). While in commercial viral advertising consumers are more likely to pass-on an

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health related communication, with the absence of a commercial intent, and consequently of a brand, consumers are more likely to pass on an health related advertisement to others in a SNS context when their attitude toward the NGO is positive.

Concerning the third attitudinal predictor Attitude toward the advertisement a non-significant relationship has been found with Intentions to forward the advertisement,

consequently the hypothesis stated in the present study ( H1) has been rejected. This result goes in the opposite direction from the findings encountered in past literature about

commercial viral advertising in the SNS context (Ketelaar et all, 2013; Chu, 2011) and e-mail context (Eckler & Bolls, 2011; Chiu et al., 2007; Phelps et al., 2004) where it was found that the more the attitude toward the advertisement is positive the more the user will be likely to forward the message. This opposite direction in the results might be related to the

importance and seriousness of the messages conveyed in health related communication. While, in the commercial context, the goal is most of the time to entertain users and hide the commercial intent creating intriguing, funny videos in order to give a high dissemination potential to the advertisement (Park et al., 2011), in health related advertising the goal is mainly informative and most of the time aims to create shock and fear in order to be effective. For this reason, in health communication, the importance and the relevance of the problems treated outweigh the likeability and the entertaining characteristic of the advertisement itself . People might tend to not pay attention to the characteristic of the advertisement but to the relevance of the information given, in order to forward it to others.

In conclusion, analysing each predictor separately, it has been noticed that the ones that have significant influence on the dependent variable of the present study are two attitudinal factors and only one social factor. On the other hand, when summed together, social factors seemed to slightly affect intention to forward the advertisement more than attitudinal factors, even though this difference resulted too small to be significant. This

incongruence in the results could be explained by the fact that attitude toward the advertising in general and attitude toward the NGO had only a weak influence on the dependent variable while, perceived importance of the problem for the peers, appeared to have a moderate

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influence on the dependent. It is possible then to state that perceived importance of the problem for the peers might be the best predictor in motivating people to share health related advertising.

Limitations & Further researches

The present research aim to study a type of viral advertising never investigated before in the context of SNS. However findings are not completely in line with what was expected. This incongruence between findings and expectations could have been due to some limitations of the present research.

First, the setting in which the online survey was conducted was not completely realistic. Past research (Ketelaar et al., 2013; van Noort et al., 2012) used real campaigns in order to conduct their studies. Especially in the research of Ketelaar et al.(2013), users were reached by banners or friends invitations without mentioning the reasons of the requested participation. Subsequently, two weeks later, they were asked to fill in a questionnaire

concerning the video they had been exposed to. In the present study users were approached by Facebook private messages, with a text giving them instructions on how to conduct in an online survey. The use of an introducing text and the presence of the viral video inside the survey could have biased the respondents. Participants were aware that they were exposed to the video in order to conduct a study, consequently their answers and reactions to the stimulus could have differed from reality.

Second, the present research investigated, as dependent variable, intentions to forward the advertisement while past study on commercial viral advertising on SNS (Ketelaar et.al.,2013; Chu, 2011) focused on the actual pass on behaviour. Studying the actual pass-on behaviour should have been more appropriate because “intentions explains only the 28% of the variance, on average in future behaviour” (Sheeran, 2002, p.29) Further research should focus on recreating a setting closer to reality. Pass-on behaviour could be studied by

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questionnaire should be send in a second time, only to the people that shared the advertisement , asking for the motivations that lead them to forward the message.

The third limitation concern the number of stimuli that was used. Past research by Ketelaar et al. (2013) used 3 different advertisements as stimuli while the present study proposed only one stimulus. Further research should propose more than one ad in order to enhance the external validity of the study. Moreover the advertisements should treat different issues. It is possible, in fact, that responses could differ among different health related videos, and that the topics covered by the different health related advertisements could be perceived with different importance.

Finally, a limitation has been found in the number of participants achieved for the study. While 166 participants had opened the survey and agreed to participate, 46 of them did not answer the questionnaire. These missing scores could be explained by technical problems. It is possible that these 46 respondents tried to complete the survey using devices that did not support the format of the survey , such as mobile phones and tablets. Further researches should assure that the survey created is supported by all kind of devices.

Implications

This study aimed to find which are the main factors that motivate individuals to share health-related viral advertising on SNS

Findings revealed that the best predictor in motivating users to forward health related advertising is the perceived societal relevance of the problems treated in health-related advertisements. This factor resulted to be the most influential one, while also attitude toward viral advertising in general and attitude toward NGO showed to have a weak effect on the intention to forward an health- related advertisement.

Findings from the present research increased the scientific knowledge in the field of SNS studies, giving an insight into which predictors motivates users to share health-related viral advertisements and shedding light on a kind of viral advertising that has never been investigated before in the context of SNSs.

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This research brought also concrete support for NGOs, informing these organizations on how to realize an effective viral health-related communication. Relying on the findings of the present study, NGOs should realize campaigns aiming at making people aware of the seriousness and the relevance that these problems have for society. The use of a social validation technique could be a useful strategy to apply in order build a viral health related advertisement with high dissemination potential. Moreover findings supported the hypothesis that a positive attitude toward the NGO leads to higher forwarding intentions. Consequently NGOs, especially the small ones, should try to promote their identities, raising awareness in people about who are they, their objectives and goals.

Finally, the present study has high societal valence., Using the knowledge gained in the present study, NGOs could be able to create effective health-related advertisements. Moreover an effective viral advertisement, could not only raise awareness concerning a specific health-related problem but could also lead to the viewer to donating money to health related cause. The presence of NGOs on internet, in fact, created phenomenon called “Philanthropy 2.0” that represents the entrance of the donation and charity system in the digital age. Nowadays, in fact, donating money has become as simple as sending a text or clicking a button. The process is pretty simple: organizations take advantages of SNS in order to spread the message between people, make it become viral, raise awareness, then there are crowd funding and kick starters websites in which people can easily donate for the causes they want. Therefore, for NGOs, being active on social networks and create effective engaging and emotional messages could comport not only a rise of awareness toward a specific problem but could also lead the viewer to comply a concrete pro-social behaviour: donate money for the health related cause. Consequently investigating how NGOs can be effective in social media health related activities gains even more important valence, because it can contribute to an actual donation of money by SNS users. For these reasons the

present study will be fundamental for the research in this field. In this way also the society could benefit from the resolution of serious problems , achieved by simple donations to the NGO that produced the effective viral health related message.

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Reference list

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 50(2), 179-211.

Broxton, T., Interian, Y., Vaver, J., & Wattenhofer, M. (2013). Catching a viral video. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, 40(2), 241-259.

Chiu, H., Hsieh Y., Kao, Y. and Lee, M. (2007). The Determinants of Email Receivers' Disseminating Behaviors on the Internet. Journal of Advertising, 47(4), p.524.

Chu, S. C. (2011). Viral advertising in social media: Participation in Facebook groups and responses among college-aged users. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), 30-43.

Dafonte-Gómez, A. (2014). The Key Elements of Viral Advertising. From Motivation to Emotion in the Most Shared Videos. Comunicar, 21(43), 199-207.

Dan Noyes (2014.). The Top 20 Valuable Facebook Statistics. Retrieved November 25th , 2014, from www.zephoria.com .

Dean, D. H. (2002). Associating the corporation with a charitable event through sponsorship: Measuring the effects on corporate community relations. Journal of Advertising, 77-87.

Dobele, A., Lindgreen, A., Beverland, M., Vanhamme, J., & Van Wijk, R. (2007). Why pass on viral messages? Because they connect emotionally. Business Horizons, 50(4), 291-304.

Eckler, P., & Rodgers, S. (2010). Viral marketing on the Internet. Wiley International

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Gosselin, P., & Poitras, P. (2008). Use of an internet “viral” marketing software platform in health promotion. Journal of medical Internet research,10(4).

Ho, J. Y., & Dempsey, M. (2010). Viral marketing: Motivations to forward online content. Journal of Business Research, 63(9), 1000-1006.

Huang, C. C., Lin, T. C., & Lin, K. J. (2009). Factors affecting pass-along email intentions (PAEIs): Integrating the social capital and social cognition theories. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 8(3), 160-169.

Huang, J., Chen, R., & Wang, X. (2012). Factors influencing intention to forward short Internet videos. Social Behavior and Personality international journal, 40(1), 5-14.

Ketelaar, P. E., van’t Riet, J., Vergeer, M., van Reijmersdal, E. A., & Crutzen, R.(2013) Why do people pass on viral advertising on social network sites? Investigating the effects of social and attitudinal factors. Internal Report, Radboud university.

Mares, M. L., & Woodard, E. (2005). Positive effects of television on children's social interactions: A meta-analysis. Media Psychology, 7(3), 301-322.

Marsden, P. V., & Campbell, K. E. (1984). Measuring tie strength. Social forces, 63(2), 482-501.

Park, H., Rodgers, S., & Stemmle, J. (2011). Health organizations’ use of Facebook for health advertising and promotion. Journal of interactive advertising, 12(1), 62-77.

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