Attitude, Attitude Certainty and Behavioral Intention:
Influence of Emphasis Frames on a Debate About Ivory in China
Jialu Zhang Student Number: 11082011
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master’s Programme: Journalism, Media and Globalisation Supervisor: Dr. Mark Boukes
Abstract
Building upon existing literature on framing effects, this study examines how emphasis frames affect attitude, attitude certainty and how attitude certainty
moderates the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention. An experiment (n = 633) with five conditions varying on the amount of negative messages was conducted to test the emphasis framing effects under both one-sided and two-sided framing environments. Findings show that emphasis framing effects on attitude formation is insignificant, though the results showed a tendency that emphasis wildlife conservation will lead the audiences to have a more favorable attitude towards extending the ivory trade suspension and vice versa; individuals, who are exposed to cultural heritage frames, report significantly lower attitude certainty compared to those without; emphasizing the frames as one-sided versus two-sided would not differed their impacts on attitude certainty; the effects of attitude on behavioral intention is not fully independent but moderated by attitude certainty.
Key words: framing effects, emphasis framing, competitive framing, attitude formation, attitude certainty, attitude-behavior correspondence, ivory
China is the “world leader” when it comes to the elephant ivory trade. With the highest demand of ivory in the world that directly leads to the crucial fact of extinction of African elephants, China has been facing criticism and media attention in the international
community.
A polling by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in 2013 revealed that 70% of Chinese did not realize that ivory came from dead elephants and not tusks falling out
naturally. After being exposed to IFAW’s media campaign, 88% of the viewers fully
processed the campaign messages of rejecting ivory trade and the campaign “has more than halved the high risk segment of people—those who are most likely to purchase elephant ivory—from 54% down to 26%” (IFAW, 2013). If the ivory purchasing intention can be efficiently reduced by media campaigns, could the coverage of ivory trade in Chinese news media also restrain the high demand and reduce the purchasing intention?
On March 23, 2016, China extended the ban on the imports of African elephant ivory carvings acquired after the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) took effect in 1975 and African elephant ivory acquired as hunting trophies to December 31, 2019. In the meantime, a new ban was issued where China will forbid imports of all ivory and its products acquired before CITES.
Somehow, Chinese media turned the policy into a controversial debate and responded to the suspension with different viewpoints. Some of the news articles demonstrated support on the suspension, as ivory trade would put African elephant in danger under slaughtering and life-threatening infection. Other media argued that ivory carving is an intangible cultural heritage, which should be protected and supported. It is crucial but uncertain how audiences
would react while exposing to those competing messages. Whether their attitude, attitude certainty and behavioral intention would be affected or not, stirred the author’s interest.
With regard to framing effects on public opinion, news frames have proven to be a powerful tool in “constructing meaning in public debate and in shaping understanding of political issues” (Schuck & De Vreese, 2006, p6). Though a significant amount of scholarship within the filed has investigated the influence of framed messages on individuals’ attitude, attitude certainty and behavioral intention, emerging critiques have emerged as well.
Firstly, the interdisciplinary nature of framing research has lead to “both a blessing and a curse” (Hertog & Mcleod, 2001, p. 139). Numerous studies have allowed the researchers to draw inspirations from each other, while the conceptual ambiguity and lack of clear
operationalization also lead to inconsistent findings (Levin, Schneider & Gaeth, 1998). For instance, distinct differences between emphasis framing effects and equivalence framing effects need to be considered when framing effects are examined. Secondly, external validity of existing studies is often questionable. As experiments are typically designed to expose participants in single-sided messages framed conditions that do not model the real media environment they are embedded in.
The present study aims to address the gaps in the emphasis framing literature and answer the following Research Question: To what extent would emphasis frames affect attitude, attitude certainty and how does attitude certainty moderate the effects between attitude and behavioral intention?
Furthermore, the present study contributes to the existing literatures in three ways. Firstly, the study examines framing effects on attitude in both one-sided versus two-sided emphasis
framing conditions to gain a more accurate understanding of the underlying psychological process of attitude formation. Secondly, the study examines to what extent the negative messages would affect attitude certainty in the emphasis framing condition and whether the effects differ among one-sided and two-sided conditions. Thirdly, the study tests how attitude certainty functions as a moderator in the relationship between attitude and behavioral
intention under the condition of emphasis framing.
Theoretical Framework The Interdisciplinary Nature of Framing Research
Since the first idea of framing has been introduced as the principles of organization that govern social events by Goffman (1974), the concept has received significant research attention. Studies of framing firstly rooted both in psychological and sociological fields. The sociological foundation of framing is mainly under the assumption that individuals cannot fully understand the world but always interpret it with implicit cultural roots. Goffman argued that individuals apply interpretive schemas to classify information and then interpret it
meaningfully (Goffman, 1974). In the psychological domain, framing studies originated from the experimental work done by Kahneman and Tversky (1979,1984) wherein they examined the underlying psychological process of judgment and decision-making to see how different scenarios influence people’s choices and their evaluation when various options are being presented.
When framing was introduced to communication science specifically, Tuchman (1978) understood the concept of news as “social construction” and a “social resource” where others described it as “cultural resonance” or “narrative fidelity” which entails “selection and
salience” (e.g. Gamson & Modigliani, 1987; Snow & Benford, 1988; Entman, 1993). Therefore, framing can be understood as both a macro-level and as a micro-level construct, with four distinct processes involved: framing-building, frame-setting, individual-level outcomes of framing and a feedback loop from audiences to journalists (Scheufele, 1999, 2000).
Among the four processes, the middle two, which are related to the effects of media frames on audiences’ frames, have received the most intense interest. Over the last decades, researchers have documented those two processes as framing effects across multiple domains. In the field of politically relevant attitude formation, a wide range of studies have been done concerning election framing (e.g. Druckman et al., 2010; Ansolabehere & Snyder, 2004;), specific policies framing such as abortion (McCaffrey & Keys, 2000), gun control (Markel & Joslyn, 2001), climate change (Spence & Pidgeon, 2010), health care (Boukes et al., 2015) and EU enlargement (Schuck & de Vreese, 2006).
Somehow, the outcomes of how framing of information affects one’s judgment and decision are not always consistent (e.g. Levin, Schneider & Gaeth, 1998; Cacciatore, Scheufele & Iyengar, 2016). Despite the conceptual ambiguity that is overlaying what constitutes framing and its overlaps with other conceptual models such as agenda setting and priming (Iyengar, 2011), one of the alternative explanations of the above phenomenon is the interdisciplinary root caused by two unrelated approaches of framing. Psychological-rooted framing refers to the variation in how a given piece of information is being presented
differently but with the an identical expected value that would lead to different behavioral or attitudinal outcomes, rather than what information is being communicated in public discourse
(e.g. Iyengar, 2011; Cacciatore, Scheufele & Iyengar, 2016). Therefore, distinguishing framing research by its root is pressing.
Emphasis Framing Theory
Lack of mutual understanding of framing effects due to its various approaches has lead to disagreements among scholars. For instance, there is a relatively consistent tendency for people to take risky choice and avoid losses in comparison to choices of realizing gains (Levin, Schneider & Gaeth, 1998); For example, Schuck and de Vreese (2006) revealed that participants in an opportunity frame condition showed higher support of EU enlargement than in the risk condition.
In Levin et al.’s study (1998), the manipulation of “avoiding losses” and “realizing gains” are considered as logically equivalent information which can be labeled as “equivalence
framing”; while in the case of EU enlargement, Schuck and de Vreese’s (2006) stimulus are emphasizing either values of risk or opportunity respectively; and a selection of one set of arguments over another are also deemed as a frame. Those who receive logically equivalent frames are processing the identical information on different levels of persuasion, while those who are exposed to emphasis frames have their focus on qualitatively different information that differs its impact on evaluation. Though there are distinct differences between emphasis framing effects and equivalence framing effects, the attention is still limited in the framing research field.
Furthermore, in the sociological domain, emphasis framing is a more suitable approach as studies often manipulate “what an audience receives rather than how equivalent
equivalence framing, emphasis framing has its advantages in ecological validity. Taking into account the complexity of the everyday communication environment, objectively equivalent descriptions of the same news issues are almost impossible to encounter.
When it comes to ivory trade and the most recent ivory import suspension, Chinese media have been portraying the consequences as a controversial issue, where there is no identically fixed equivalence between “lose framing” of ivory carving as intangible cultural heritage and “gain framing” of protecting the endangered African elephants from extinction.
Therefore, emphasis framing theory would fit the present study in terms of analyzing the specific emphasis frames on the topic of extending ivory trade suspension: 1) the wildlife conservation frame as the suspension would favor the protection of African elephant and 2) the cultural heritage frame as suspension would lead to the destruction of tradition ivory carving culture.
Competitive Frames
By emphasizing a subset of values in a message, individuals are lead to take those values into consideration during their attitude formation. Somehow, in a real communication
environment, most audiences are embedded with competitive messages rather than one-sided messages. Many of the studies on single-sided emphasis framing have been facing the
emerging critiques of its external validity (Nisbet et al., 2013). In many different contexts from policy debates to election campaigns, the news frames are presented with both sides to induce citizens processing comprehensive information and forming personal opinions. Typically, examining only one frame per side only provides limited insights on emphasis framing effects.
Among all, Sniderman and Theriault (2004) might be the pioneers to test competitive framing effects. Their studies on free speech conditions and government spending conditions both revealed that when participants were exposed to both sides of the frames, they leaned to base their attitude on their pre-existing values and the framing effects are dampened
(Sniderman & Theriault, 2004). This phenomenon of framing effects being diminished or negated when participants are exposed to competing frames has also been yielded in other studies (e.g. Borah, 2011; Chong & Druckman, 2007; Brewer & Gross, 2005).
Unfortunately, very little empirical studies have been conducted to examine how the precise quantities and frequencies of emphasis frames in competitive framing conditions might affect attitude formation. While in competitive framing environments, a situation may vary from symmetric frames (both sides in equal quantities) to asymmetric frames (both sides in unequal quantities), while scant studies have examined competitive framing effects on attitude formation, none of them have paid attention to the degree of negativity (minor, equal or major).
Attitude Formation
To understand the underlying psychological process of attitude formation in the emphasis framing environments, the author presents a widely used and common portrait of attitude framework labeled as expectancy value model (e.g. Fishbein & Ajzen, 1980; Nelson, Oxley & Clawson, 1997;), describing attitude with the following equation:
That is to say, one’s overall attitude towards the ivory trade suspension might consist of a combination of both negative and positive evaluations, vi , of the project on different
dimensions i. The individual might believe suspension will favor the protection of the elephants (i =1;) but harm the cultural heritage of ivory carving (i =2). Assuming this individual places a positive value on both biodiversity and cultural diversity, then v1 is positive and v2 is negative. His or her attitude towards the suspension will depend on the relative magnitudes of v1 and v2 discounted by the relative salience weights (w1 and w2) assigned respectively to each attribute.
In the case of one-sided frames, conventional framing-effect studies revealed that an individual’s attitude could be significantly affected by exposure to a certain frame (e.g. Domke et al., 1998; Iyengar, 1991; McLeod & Detenber, 1999; Nelson, Clawson, & Oxley, 1997; Valkenburg, Semetko, & de Vreese, 1999). The framing effects of exposure to
one-sided frames, such as purely emphasizing how extending the ivory suspension would prevent African elephants from extinction, consequently lead individuals to favor extending the suspension, and vice versa.
Therefore, the author predicts:
Hypothesis1a：Exposure to wildlife conservation emphasis frames will lead to a more favorable attitude towards extending the suspension compared to exposure to cultural heritage emphasis frames.
component and salience component change an individual’s overall attitudes simultaneously. Individuals, who have received either symmetric or asymmetric frames, would evaluate the opposing frames and reweight their attitude based on the degree of negativity and form their overall attitude.
In other words, when the downsides in respect of extending ivory suspension such as its consequences on destruction traditional cultural of ivory carving are mixed in the messages, the overall attitude on extending ivory trade suspension would alter along with the degree of negativity, which is the amount of opposing messages.
Therefore, the following can be expected:
Hypothesis1b: The emphasis frames with a lesser amount of cultural heritage messages will lead to a more favorable attitude towards the extension of ivory trade suspension compared to those with more.
Attitude Certainty and Negativity Bias
While attitudes matter, attitude certainty also has a number of crucial consequences as it reflects the favorability or direction of to what extent an individual perceives the attitude as correct. Attitude certainty, which refers to a person’s sense of conviction of an attitude, tends to influence cognition and behavior as durable attitudes would resist attempts at changes and influence cognition and impactful attitudes enhance cognition and behavior (Bizer & Petty, 2005).
been focusing on negativity bias (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994), which suggests that negativity has more impact than positive messages of equal intensity.
Bizer and Petty’s study (2005) on the effects of framing on the resistance of political attitudes takes a closer look and suggests that, comparing with positive messages, negatively framed messages may enhance attitude certainty regardless of whether that underlying
content basis of attitude was actually negative or positive. Though this theory has been firmly grounded through reviews on empirical works over a wide variety of situations (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Kanouse, 1972; Peeters & Czapinski, 1990), most of the research designs employed equivalence framing theory, wherein negative information has a “systematically stronger impact on judgment than objectivity equivalent positive information”(Levin, Schneider & Gaeth, 1998, p176).
Like the author stated above, there are distinct differences between equivalence framing and emphasis framing. When it comes to the attributes of frames with respect to negative or positive though, frames emphasizing the opposing side would still fit in the profile of
negative frames. As the messages are not framed logically equivalent but rather qualitatively different, the negative bias might show different impact on attitude certainty when it comes to emphasis framing environments.
That is to say, framing the suspension while emphasizing the downsides such as destructing traditional cultural heritage will be sufficient on shaping public opinion to disfavor the suspension, but at the same time, it might not sufficiently enhance the resistance of that attitude, as the frames emphasizing wildlife conservation and cultural heritage are neither identical information nor logically equivalent.
Therefore, to fill in the gap of how emphasis framing with negative messages would affect attitude certainty, the author formulates the research question as following:
Research Question1: To what extent would the emphasis frames of cultural heritage affect attitude certainty?
Attitude Certainty in Competitive Framing Conditions
Much of the literature on attitude certainty suggests that getting people to think carefully about their attitude can produce more durable and impactful evaluations (e.g. Chaiken, 1980; Petty, Haugtvedt & Smith, 1995). In the case of competitive framing, attitudes can be
understood as individual preferences over objects in a broader sense that are derived from comparative evaluations of those objects (Hsee, 1996). Early research of McGuire’s inoculation theory (1961) can be referenced as a support of how two-sided competitive messages appeared capable of producing more long lasting impact than one-sided messages.
That is to say, when individuals make a conscious and thoughtful inference that their attitudes are based upon grater knowledge, they are more certain of their attitude. In addition, Rucker, Petty and Brinol’s study (2008) on brand communication also discovered that when participants were being presented with both-sided messages, they reported greater certainty in their attitudes, no matter whether the amount of negative messages were few or
inconsequential compared to positive messages. By applying to meta-cognition theory, they suggest that if there is no indication of considering negative factors, individuals might sense their attitudes are based on incomplete knowledge and thus be less certain of their attitude.
Unfortunately, the study did not provide much insight on how equal amount of negative messages might affect the attitude certainty (Rucker, Petty & Brinol, 2008).
Extensive literature on emphasis framing on the other hand also demonstrates that frames “establish hierarchies among competing frames” (Nelson & Willey, 2001, p 263) and the motivational concerns such as the desire to be accurate (Borah, 2011) and anxiety which assist the consideration of opposing viewpoints (MacKuen, Wolak, Kelle & Marcus, 2010) would lead individuals to seek more information in order to reduce uncertainty. Therefore, when individuals are facing conflicting values containing both positive and negative
information components but unable to access additional information, it is uncertain whether they would experience ambivalence or certainty.
When a choice is required to be made on whether to support extending ivory suspension or not, it is uncertain whether the individuals who received two-sided emphasis frames would feel the completeness of their knowledge in determining their certainty or incompleteness and desire of seeking more information. As a matter of fact, the degree of negativity in
competitive frames might play a crucial role in terms of enhancing attitude certainty, and the amount of cultural heritage emphasis frames might lead to the uncertainty as “lack of sure knowledge” to an extent (Downs, 1957, p.77).
Therefore, the author formulates the research question as following:
Research Question2: To what extent would one-sided emphasis frames and two-sided emphasis frames affect attitude certainty differently?
Attitude-behavior Correspondence
Examining emphasis-framing effects on attitude and attitude certainty is undoubtedly meaningful; however, the influence of news frames on behavioral intention should not be neglected. Most of the existing literature has taken equivalence framing to explore preventive health care behaviors (Gerend & Monday, 2008; Gerend & Magloire, 2008) and studies on behavioral intention applying to emphasis framing theory are not frequent.
Among those countable studies on behavioral intention in the field of emphasis framing environments, Nabi (2003) found out frames emphasizing fear and anger can influence information-seeking behavior differently. Furthermore, Borah (2011) discovered that
motivated processing (behavioral intent, willingness to seek information and talk) intensified framing effects and specifically so in the competitive framing condition. In terms of
purchasing behavior, Rucker, Petty and Brinol’s (2008) study revealed that individuals who form favorable attitudes as a result of exposure to competitive frames (few negative messages) report greater willingness to purchase a product than those who received one-sided frames and formed equally favorable attitude, but only under the condition that they are aware of the existing potential negative messages. Therefore, in the current study, whether the emphasis framing has a direct influence on behavioral intention or not becomes uncertain.
One consequence of increasing attitude certainty is that it increases attitude-behavior correspondence (Berger, 1992; Krishnan & Smith, 1998; Rucker & Petty, 2004). That is, if individuals hold their attitudes with greater certainty, those attitudes are more likely to guide and influence behavior. Importantly, in studying the influence of attitude certainty on
behavior/intentions (Rucker, Petty & Briñol, 2008). For example, if two individuals have equally negative attitude towards the policy of extending ivory suspension, but one individual holds a stronger attitude certainty, this more certain individual would be more inclined to act on his attitude, which might reflect on the behavior of purchasing ivory products.
Therefore, the author predicts:
Hypothesis2: In emphasis framing conditions, the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention is moderated by attitude certainty.
Methods
To test the emphasis framing effects on attitude, attitude certainty and the possible relationship between attitude and behavioral intention moderated by attitude certainty, this study used a single factor, post-test only, between-subjects experimental design with participants randomly assigned to one of five conditions. Within this design the first
condition represents the one-sided wildlife conservation frame, the second condition refers to the one-sided cultural heritage frame; the third and forth conditions are two-sided wildlife conservation frames and two-sided cultural heritage frames with one paragraph of opposing frames respectively making it two-sided asymmetric framing. The last condition contains symmetric competitive frames with an equal emphasis on wildlife conservation and cultural heritage (see Appendix for example).
Participants
survey distributed via WeChat (a mobile based chat application). By using snowball sampling, potential Chinese participants were contacted in May 2016 over a 5-day period. A total of 641 participants out of 1386 responses complete the experiment (46.2% completion rates). After excluding outliers, defined as those whose spent more than 2 standard deviation from the mean of survey completion time in minutes (M = 13.55, SD = 91.4), a total 633 participants (57.8% females, age = 16-68, M = 31.4, SD = 10. 80) were included.
Procedure
Participants were informed that they would join in a project to help researchers get a better understanding of ivory trade. Firstly, participants were randomly exposed to one of five news articles. Next, participants completed a post-test questionnaire, which asked for their attitudes towards the extension of ivory suspension, attitude certainty and their willingness of purchasing ivory products in the following orders. Finally, demographic details were
collected. Upon completion, participants were debriefed. The entire procedure lasted about 10 minutes on average.
Stimulus Material
The experiment’s stimulus material consisted of news topic on extending ivory suspension in five alternative versions, which was produced by the author based on the in-depth reading of over 40 news articles on the same topic in Chinese media outlets to increase the external validity. To ensure that stimulus material reflects the emphasis framed as conceptualized earlier in this study, the author chose the Wall Street Journal Formula (Rich, 2015), as this formula allowed the author to maximize the manipulation of emphasis over outright promotion through the whole article. In five versions, the formula was identical in
terms of: 1) the headlines as “Extending the suspension of ivory trade”, 2) the intro with a soft lead in narrative writing, 3) the supporting point in the discussion of consequences of extending suspension, 4) the identical core section with factual information on the policy of suspension from Chinese government, 5) the ending as a circle kicker returning to the human-interest story in the intro.
Though the main experimental factor in five conditions varies on two dimensions, 1) the emphasis on wildlife conservation frames versus cultural heritage frames and 2) the debate being presented as one-sided, symmetric two-sided, or asymmetric two-sided; the experiment factor can also be interpreted as a variation on the amount of cultural heritage frames in the entire article, which is zero, minor, equal, major and absolute. In total, there were three
different parts within the experimental conditions according to the amount of cultural heritage frames. Firstly, the sub-headlines differ from condition one and three as “Making a difference for elephants in Africa”, condition two and four as “Destruction of traditional Chinese culture by attention-seeking lawmakers”, and condition five as “The extinction of elephants and traditional cultural heritage” to strengthen the manipulation. Secondly, the emphasis on wildlife conservation was explicitly portraying a human-interest story of conservationist Darren Porgieter combating poachers while the emphasis on cultural heritage frames contains a human-interest story of ivory carving master Song Chunguo’s concerns. Thirdly, the
amount of cultural heritage messages in five conditions varies from zero negative messages, one short paragraph of negative messages, symmetrical amount of negative messages, one short paragraph of positive messages only and absolute full negative messages.
In order to assess whether the framing manipulations would be successfully perceived by participants, a separate manipulation check was conducted with an extra 106 participants out of 186 responses in total (56.1% completion rate) using the same sampling methods as above. Participants were asked to respond on an 11-point scale (0 =completely one-sided, 10 = completely two-sided) to the following question: “How much do you think this article
presents a one-sided versus two-sided viewpoint on the issue of an ivory import suspension?” An ANOVA test revealed that there was a significant effect of the manipulation level in five conditions, F (4,101) = 16.73, p < .001; Participants in symmetric two-sides frames condition (M = 8.29, SD = 1.10) perceived their article significantly more as being two-sided (p < .001) than participants in the one-sided wildlife framing condition (M = 3.25, SD = 2.77) and one-sided cultural heritage framing condition (M = 3.22, SD = 2.28).
Furthermore, participants were asked to measure the emphasis of the article they were assigned to on an 11-point scale (0= extremely leaning wildlife conservation frames, 10 = extremely leaning to cultural heritage frames) to ensure the emphasis is sufficiently perceived. Results confirmed that there was a significant manipulation on the emphasis frames in five conditions, F (4.101) = 9.65, P < .001. Participants in wildlife conservation condition (M = 2.75, SD = 3.43) perceived their article significantly (p< .001) as emphasizing on wildlife conservation compared to those in cultural heritage frames condition (M = 6.75, SD = 2.33) and to those exposed to the condition, which consist of major cultural heritage messages (M = 5.65, SD = 2.32).
Measurement of Dependent Variables
statements (support, favor and their reverse versions) and were measured on the same 11-point scales (0 = extremely disagree, 11= extremely agree). Statements were framed such as “I support extending the ivory trade suspension”. After recoding the reverse versions, the reliability test confirmed the consistency, Cronbach’s α = .87 (M = 7.04, SD = 2.94).
Attitude certainty. Another key dependent variable was assessed with a set of two statements and two questions tapping on participants’ attitude certainty. Participants were asked “How certain are you of your attitude towards the extension of the suspension” and “How convinced are you that your attitude towards the extension of the suspension is
correct”. Participants were also asked to measure their agreements on statements “I think my attitude towards extending ivory trade suspension is durable for a long time” and “I don’t think I will change my attitude towards extending ivory trade suspension in a short time”. All scales ranged from 0 to 10 with negative descriptors anchored at 0 and positive descriptors anchored at 10. The test for scale reliability is conformed as indicated by a Cronbach’s α of .84 (M = 8.16, SD = 2.01).
Behavioral intention. The last dependent variable was operationalized as the intention of purchasing ivory products. Participants were asked to measure their intention of
purchasing ivory products on the purpose of investment, gift, self-use, art-collection
respectively on 11-point scales (0 = not at all, 10 = definitely). The measurement confirmed to be reliable, Cronbach’s α = .95 (M = 1.56, SD = 2.4)
Results Effects on Attitude
Variance indicated that none of the five conditions differed significantly on their level of attitude, F(4,628) = 1.63, p = .165. Hypotheses 1a is not confirmed with a significant difference, though a LSD posthoc test indicated that participants in wildlife conservation condition have a more favorable attitude (M = 7.33, SD = 3.04) towards extending the
suspension compared to the exposure to the cultural heritage condition (M = 6.60, SD = 2.82), p = .050.
[Figure 1 about here]
Hypothesis 1b was only partly confirmed as the attitude differed significantly (p < .05) between the cultural heritage condition (M = 6.60, SD = 2.82) and the two-sided wildlife conservation condition (M = 7.36, SD = 3.02), which indicates that the emphasis frames with minor amount of cultural heritage messages will lead to a significant favorable attitude
towards the extension of ivory trade suspension compared to those with absolute full negative messages.
An additional independent samples t-test was conducted to investigate whether those four conditions with cultural heritage frames would showe a significant difference than the one without. Results show that individuals who are exposed to frames with cultural heritage messages no matter the amount (M= 6.96, SD = 2.92) showed a lower supportive attitude than those who were only exposed to wildlife conservation frames (M = 7.33, SD = 3.04), though the difference is insignificant, t (631) = 1.32, p = .188. Furthermore, an independent samples t-test also indicated that those four conditions with wildlife conservation frames (M = 7.14, SD = 2.97) showed insignificant higher support (t, (613) = -1. 76, p = .078) than the
one without (M = 6.60, SD = 2.82). Effects on Attitude Certainty
Firstly, an ANOVA test was conducted to examine the effects that the five conditions have on attitude certainty, and results suggest that attitude differs significantly across five conditions, F(4,628) = 4.44, p < .01. The mean scores of attitude certainty for all conditions are displayed in Figure 2.
[Figure 2 about here]
To answer Research Question 1, an independent samples t-test was conducted to see if four conditions with emphasis on cultural heritage, no matter the amount, leads to a
significant difference on attitude certainty compared to the condition without. Results indicated that participants in four conditions that contains emphasis frames on cultural heritage messages (M = 8.05, SD = 2.03) showed significant lower attitude certainty
compared to participants in wildlife conservation condition (M = 8.54, SD = 1.89), t (631) = 2.52, p< .05.
Participants in cultural heritage condition (M = 7.80, SD = 2.10) have a significantly lower attitude certainty (p < .01) towards extending the suspension compared to those exposed to the wildlife conservation condition (M = 8.54, SD = 1.89) and the two-sided wildlife conservation condition (M = 8.50, SD = 1.71).
Furthermore, the results also revealed a significantly lower attitude certainty (p < .01) when participants were exposed to the two-sided cultural heritage condition (M = 7.76, SD = 2.09) compared to the wildlife conservation condition (M = 8.24, SD = 1.98) and the
two-sided wildlife conservation condition (M = 8.50, SD = 1.71).
Lastly, participants in two-sided symmetric emphasis condition (M = 8.02, SD = 2.16) showed a significant lower attitude certainty (p < .05) compared to those in the wildlife conservation condition (M = 8.54, SD = 1.89) and two-sided wildlife conservation frames (M = 8.50, SD = 1.71)
Additionally, the author tests whether wildlife conservation frames have a significant effect on attitude certainty or not. An independent samples t-test was conducted. The results indicated that those conditions with wildlife conservation frames (M = 8.24, SD = 1.98) held significantly higher attitude certainty (M = 7.80, SD = 2.10) compared to those without, t (631) = -2.19, p < .05.
To answer Research Question 2, an independent samples t-test was run to compare the level of attitude certainty between the one-sided emphasis framing condition and two-sided emphasis framing condition. The attitude certainty of the participants in the one-sided emphasis framing condition (M = 8.19, SD = 2.02) was not significantly different from those in the two-sided emphasis framing condition (M = 8.13, SD = 2.00), t(631) = -. 36, p = .721. An additional independent samples t-test was conducted to examine the level of attitude certainty between asymmetric conditions (two-sided wildlife conservation condition and two-sided cultural heritage condition) and the symmetric condition. The attitude certainty of the participants in the asymmetric framing condition (M = 8.20, SD = 1.91) was not
significantly different from those in the symmetric framing condition (M = 8.02, SD = 2.16), t(377) = .80, p = .423.
A moderation analysis was conducted to investigate whether the association between attitude and behavioral intention depends on the amount of attitude certainty individuals hold for extending ivory suspension as Hypnoses 2 predicted.
Firstly, a regression analysis with attitude as independent variable and behavioral intention as dependent variable revealed a negative association between attitude and behavioral intention (r = -.20, p < .001), which indicates the more favorable attitude individuals hold, the less behavioral intention they have (i.e., less likely to purchase ivory products). A simple linear regression was conducted to predict behavioral intention based on attitude. The results suggest that attitude predicts behavioral intention significantly, β = -.17, t(631) = -.21, p < .001. Attitude also explained a significant proportion of variance in the score of behavioral intention, F(1,631) = 29.50, R2 = .05, p < .001.
After centering attitude and attitude certainty and computing the attitude-by-attitude certainty interaction term (Aiken & West, 1991), the two predictors and the interaction were entered simultaneously into a regression model. The results indicate that the overall
moderation model is significant, F(3,629) = 33.72, R2= .12, p < .001. Regression analysis revealed that the interaction predicts behavioral intention at a level of borderline significance, (β = -.04, t(629) = -1.85, p = .064); while attitude certainty predicts behavioral intention significantly (β = -.43, t(629) = -7.16, p<.001).
Furthermore, for those who hold high levels of attitude certainty (n = 358) (M = 9.69, SD = .54), the attitude was more strongly related to behavioral intention (β = -.10, t(629) = -2.30 p < .05); while for those individuals with low attitude certainty (n = 283)(M = 6.21, SD = 1.42), the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention is no longer significant (β
= .05, t (629) = .78 p = .437).
Additionally, the author applied the Johnson-Neyman technique to examine the conditional effects of attitude on behavioral intention at the values of the attitude certainty. The results suggest that when individuals have an attitude certainty above the scale of 8.21, individuals’ attitude starts to have significant effects on behavior, β=-.07, t(629) =-1.96, p =.050; as the certainty increases, the relationship between the attitude and behavior becomes more negative, β=-.10, t(629) = -2.30, p<.05.
Conclusion and Discussion
The present study provides empirical evidence in emphasis framing context for 1) the effects of emphasis messages on attitude and attitude certainty in both one-sided and two-sided conditions, 2) the moderation effects of attitude certainty between attitude and behavioral intention. By employing both emphasis framing and competitive framing conditions, the present study not only filled the gap of existing studies but also enhanced external validity to increase its generalizability when applying to real life.
Within the study, an experiment with five manipulated framing conditions was conducted. The results has shown that emphasis framing effects on attitude formation is insignificant, though the results showed a tendency that emphasis wildlife conservation will lead the
audiences to have a more favorable attitude towards extending the ivory trade suspension and vice versa. The study also reveals that individuals, who are exposed to cultural heritage frames, report significantly lower attitude certainty compared to those without. Emphasizing the frames as one-sided versus two-sided would not differed their impacts on attitude
fully independent but moderated by attitude certainty. The attitude is more effective on behavioral intention among individuals who hold high attitude certainty.
Firstly, as the finding suggests, emphasis framing effects might not be as strong and universal as we expect, where audiences only play a passive role. The complexity of individuals’ psychological processes might be one of the explanations on why emphasis framing is abated. Several studies have delved into the moderating and mediating processes involved in framing (e.g. Terkildsen & Schnell, 1997; Druckman, 2001; Donovan & Jalleh, 1999). The most common moderator used in framing studies might be “political knowledge” (Borah, 2011), though the results are mixed. De Vreese (2004) demonstrated that the
participants with more political knowledge and those offering greater issue elaboration were more likely to be influence by news frames, whereas later on, Schuck and de Vreese (2006) discovered that individuals with low level of political knowledge were more strongly affected by the news frame. As the present study did not moderate the participants’ pre-existing
knowledge on the topic of extending ivory suspension, further research on how knowledge moderates the association between emphasis frames and attitude is suggested.
Secondly, in contrast to the previous studies on framing effects, wherein negative messages have more impact on attitude certainty than positive ones, the present study found out that, wildlife conservation frames proved to be significantly impactful in terms of enhancing attitude certainty. The results also confirmed the distinct difference between equivalence framing and emphasis framing, that there is no effect of negativity bias on attitude certainty in the emphasis framing context. Studies about the effects of repetition on attitude certainty have shown that people expressed higher attitude certainty in repeated
expression conditions (e.g. Holland et. al, 2003; Petrocelli, Tormala & Rucker, 2007). During the present study, the experiment was conducted one and a half months after the Chinese government released the policy of extending the ivory trade suspension, wherein the policy received great media attention. It is possible that the Chinese media has stressed the
importance of wildlife conservation in their coverage and the participants who were exposed to wildlife conservation frames have received repeated expression that leads to a higher attitude certainty. Therefore, further research is suggested to examine the association between emphasis frames and attitude certainty by controlling the effects of repetition.
In terms of the conditions where both emphasis of wildlife conservation and cultural heritage messages are presented, individuals’ attitude certainty was slightly lower but not in a significant level compared to those who are exposed to one-sided framing condition. One of the explanations that there is little difference of attitude certainty among the participants in one-sided and two sided conditions, is that possibly participants in the one-sided emphasis framing conditions have already been exposed to the opposing information before the experiment, as Chinese media has been portraying the extension of ivory trade as a controversial debate since the release of the policy.
Lastly, the present study examines the attitude-behavior correspondence. The finding is in line with previous studies related to the strength of the attitude-behavior correspondence (e.g. Fazio & Zanna, 1978; Tormala & Petty, 2002). The finding also implies that certainty makes attitude more accurate to an extent and guides the behavioral intention. Therefore, those participants who hold high attitude certainty are those who are strongly supportive towards the extension of ivory suspension, and they are less likely to have intention of
purchasing ivory products.
As with all research, the present study also comes with some limitations. The study uses a snowball sampling, which inevitably results in a biased sample that only reflects the social network of the author. Among all the participants, 61.6% of them are highly educated with a completion of bachelor degree. As Narayan and Krosnick’s (1996) study revealed, education moderates response effects in attitude measurement. Furthermore, it is likely that highly educated participants are exposed to media more frequently, which leads to a repetition effects on attitude certainty, and there might be a correlation between education level and pre-existing knowledge that affects attitudes as discussed above. Therefore, a question open for further research is whether the education level moderates the effects of emphasis frames on attitude and attitude certainty. Another recommendation for further researcher is to focus on to what extent would people’s attitude certainty are based on direct versus indirect experience.
In the specific context of framing extending ivory suspension, the present study provides important implications for wild life conservationists and animal welfare organizations in terms of reducing intention of purchasing ivory products.
Firstly, media campaign emphasizing on wildlife conservation is efficient as it would not only increase the support of extending the suspension but also provide durable support, which in return leads to less ivory purchasing intention. Secondly, it is worthwhile for
conservationists to reach out to journalists and stress the importance of wildlife conservation repeatedly in order to enhance the durable support. Thirdly, it is almost impossible to avoid Chinese media emphasizing on cultural heritage frames and decreasing audiences’ attitude
certainty. Conservationists should use this as an opportunity and provide extra materials emphasizing on wildlife conservation, as those who are experiencing ambivalence would seek for additional information to reduce their uncertainty. Last but not the least,
conservationist should recognize the crucial fact they are facing. Those people who are uncertainty of their attitude are those whose ivory purchasing intention is less affected by the increase of supportive attitude. Therefore, reducing the demand of ivory products is “the Long March”.
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Figures in text
Note: Bars show mean scores of attitude of participants on an 11-point scale. Figure 1. Attitude supporting the extension of ivory suspension in five emphasis framing condition.
Note: Bars show mean scores of attitude certainty of participants on an 11-point scale. Figure 2. Attitude certainty in five emphasis framing condition.
Appendix
Note: Due to layout consideration, only part of stimulus material of symmetric competitive emphasis frames is presented as an example. The text underline is emphasizing on cultural heritage. The version used in experiment was translated into Chinese.
Extending The Suspension of Ivory Trade A Delicate Balance Between
The Extinction of Elephants and Traditional Cultural Heritage March 29th 2016
When Darren Porgieter was the section manager at Niassa National Reserve in the north of Mozambique, he was well known as ”pilot conservationist”, combating poachers with aerial surveillance. “Yes, I’ve seen countless elephant corpses, “he admitted, ”even piles of corpses, sometimes over 50, 60 all together”.
Darren could never forget the day, when he just landed with helicopter and about to rush into bushes and start searching for poachers. Gunfire suddenly broke out. “Followed the sound, I saw a male elephant with half of his face cut away, lying on the ground. His trunk was thrown aside, and he was still alive, bleeding”, Darren said,‘’ It’s all because of his tusk—ivory.”
1/3 of the tusk is growing inside the living elephant’s skull. Therefore, the easiest way of gouging out a complete piece and high quality ivory is to kill the elephant. With the slaughtering and life-threatening infection from broken tusk, ivory trade is pushing endangered elephants towards extinction. According to the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), in recent years, the volume from large-scale ivory seizures has been setting new records. Every year,
25,000-30,000 African Elephants are poached to supply the ivory trade and with the speed, African elephant will be extinct in 10 years.
Meanwhile in China, Song Chunguo, a local ivory carving master, who would sooner or later find no income in the “next to obsolete” market to pay for his two daughters college tuition fee, is also facing the danger of another type of extinction, the extinction of a traditional cultural heritage in China.
Through the entire history of China, ivory has always been a desired commodity. Its ornamental beauty and invest value has been described as “white gold” for centuries. As a matter of fact, an ivory carving depicting the Chengdu-Kunming railway was presented as a gift from China to the United Nations in 1974. In 2006, ivory carving was selected as a national intangible cultural heritage in China.
According to the National People’s Congress, ivory carving as an art form needs to be supported and protected as major cultural heritage and outstanding folk art. With the booming of art investment around 2008, ivory carvings are widely recognized as a symbol of status and wealth….
