Donors’ responses to non-profit advertising with and without celebrity: the moderating effects of self-validation and impression motivation

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Donors’ responses to non-profit advertising with and without

celebrity: the moderating effects of self-validation and impression

motivation

Master thesis, MSc BA, specialization in Marketing University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business

August 31st, 2012 Jiaxin Xie Student number: s2098164 Esdoornlaan 674 9741 MH Groningen Tel: +31647615869 Email: baiselavie@hotmail.com

First supervisor: Dr. M.C.Non

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Abstract

This study mainly discusses the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in non-profit sector. Previous studies have paid extensive attention on the advertising in commercial sector, and celebrity endorsement has been widely proved to be an effective practice to change consumer attitudes and elicit purchase intention. Whether celebrity endorsement is effective alike in non-profit sector is worth of close examination. The study has also been conducted to examine whether self-validation and impression motivation would have moderating effects on the relationship between non-profit advertisement with celebrity and donors’ responses, to be specific, attitude to nonprofit and donation intention. The results have revealed that generally the type of advertisements does not affect donors’ attitude and donation intention. Also, no significant moderating effects were found in general. Only when only-Dutch participants were considered, self-validation was found to have an impact on the donors’ attitudes towards non-profit ads with celebrity. Donors’ liking to the person in the ad was also found to have bearing on the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in non-profit advertising.

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1. Introduction

A nonprofit organization (NPO) is “an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals rather than distributing them as profit or dividends” (Wikipedia). They are mostly run for charitable activities. Apart from “NPO”, “there are many alternative or overlapping terms in use”, including: non-government organization (NGO), voluntary organization (VO), and the third sector organization (TSO). (Wikipedia). Some well-known NPOs include Oxfam, Red Cross, UNESCO, and World Wide Fund for Nature. However, there are also millions of smaller NPOs that provide social service and goodwill yet receive limited attention from people throughout the world. Especially in recent years, an increasing number of nonprofits are “stuck in the dilemma of dramatically shrinking traditional sources of revenue and bold new competition from their counterparts” (Kotler and Andreasen, P264, 1996). Therefore, recent years have witnessed a growing number of nonprofits adopting marketing concepts in order to expand the fund-raising base (Kotler, 1979), even though there have been controversies over marketing value to nonprofit organizations (Hibbert & Horne, 1996). And many non-profit organizations carry out much less marketing research than they should (Kotler and Andreasen, P264, 1996).

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investment since it has positive stock return on advertisers (Agrawal & Kamakura., 1995). However, there are also some other studies suggested another effect. Many evidences indicate that effectiveness of endorsers depends on different conditions, such as the endorser-product match up (Kamins, 1990; Solomon et al., 1992; Bower and Landreth, 2001; Liu et al., 2007). Some of the researches even found adverse responses to the sponsored brand and detrimental impact on consumer perceptions were found as a result of endorsement (Till and Shrimp, 1998; Amos et al., 2008). Both celebrity endorsement and non-profit marketing effects have been extensively studied; previous studies mostly focus on either endorser effectiveness on general commercial ads or the necessity of nonprofit marketing effort. Many studies have identified the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in general commercial ads. But the different effectiveness of ads with celebrities and ads without celebrity for non-profit advertisements has received limited attention. The effect of non-profit ads endorsed by an celebrity seems to be even trickier, considering the possible differences the respondents might perceive between commercials and non-profit advertisements. So for nonprofit marketers who have tight budgets at hand, do they really need to invest in advertisement celebrity in order to better communicate the merits of the charity they are running and ultimately elicit donation behavior from the target audiences? Or more specifically, do nonprofit celebrities have something to do with a positive ad attitude and donation behavior?

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given situation. Unlike those who have a strong need to hold accurate opinions, value and attitudes (i.e. consumers with accurate motivation), consumers “who desire to hold attitudes and display behavior that will satisfy salient social goals have strong motivation to express attitude in accordance with social norms (i.e. consumers with impression motivation)" (Fennis and Stroebe, 2010). Impression motivation can “affect the outcome of influence and persuasion attempts” (e.g. Chen & Chaiken, 1999). Thus, in this report, different effectiveness of non-profit celebrity endorsed ads between impression-motived consumers and accuracy-motivated consumers will be further examined.

In addition, a specific type of elaborative reasoning, consumer meta-cognition, has in recent years been assumed to play a significant role not only in the domain of social psychology (Jost et al, 1998), but also in memory research (Koriat& Goldsmith, 1996), and advertising (Friestad & Wright, 1995). According to Fennis and Stroebe (2010), meta-cognition is defined as “thinking about thinking or feeling or the phenomenon of reflecting on one’s own inner states, and to infer something from that process” (Fennis and Stroebe, 2010). Consumers responses and judgments are, to a large extent, affected by consumers’Meta-cognitive beliefs (Fennis and Stroebe, 2010). Consumers could have negative emotion towards the persuasion if they realize the ulterior motives. (Warlop and Alba, 2004). Self-validation, as a form of meta-cognitive judgment, has recently come under scrutiny. To be precise, it represents “the confidence information recipients have in their thoughts that can play an important role in persuasion”(Petty, Brinol, and Tormala, 2002). “The confidence consumers have in their cognitive responses to an ad can increase or decrease the favorability of product attitudes” (e.g. Petty et al., 2004). Also, source credibility has been proved to have something to do with information recipients’ attitude through manipulating their confidence level (e.g. Petty et al., 2004). Thus in this study, self-validation effect is expected to influence donors’ attitude changes and donation intention as well.

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non-profit advertisements with and without celebrity, by taking into consideration the moderating effects of consumer variables. Moderating roles of self-validation and impression motivation on the relationship between types of non-profit ads and consumer responses were also examined.

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2. Conceptual framework and hypotheses

In this chapter, prior literature about fund-raising advertising and celebrity endorsement effect in general commercials will be firstly reviewed in order to pose a hypothesis on the effectiveness of non-profit advertising with ambassadors. Then theories about self-validation and impression motivation will be scrutinized followed by hypotheses about their moderating effects on the main effect between non-profit advertising with celebrity and donors’ attitude changes and donation intention.

2.1 The effectiveness of non-profit advertising with celebrity

2.1.1 Fundraising advertising

Some articles compare the non-profit advertisements with general commercials. For non-commercial advertising, “advertisers spend money to advertise items other than a consumer product or service including political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies”(Wikipedia). According to Dan Pallotta (2009), the most common way commercial advertisers assist for-profit organizations to generate consumption from consumers is by associating a brand image with their products or service. For commercials, “the central function is to create desires” (Dan Pallotta, 2009). Also “people have a natural desire to be altruistic. When the desire is stimulated, we will give more money to urgent causes. If the desire is not aroused, we would give our money to the consumer brands which creates desire for private goods” (Dan Pallotta, 2009). Therefore, according to Dan Pallotta’s reasoning, in spite of the differences between commercial and non-commercial ads in terms of the forms they take on as well as the way they function, non-profit organizations are also supposed to resort to similar instruments which are used by profit-chasing organizations.

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1996), these researchers found that marketing for fundraising among individual donors can be a good way to overcome the problems arisen in charity sector, such as the ever-increasing number of non-profits and governmental and public support, which has diminished their financial resources (Hibbert and Horne, 1996).Therefore, non-profit advertisement as one of the most important and commonly used marketing instruments employed by nonprofits has been proved to be efficient.

2.1.2 Celebrity endorsement

Celebrity endorsement effects have received considerable attention and have been extensively studied in the past decades. Friedman (1979) defines a celebrity endorser as “individual who is known to the public (i.e., actor, sports, figures, entertainer, etc.) for his or her achievements in areas other than that of the product class endorsed”. Traditional commercials endorsed by celebrities are highly praised by profit-chasing organizations. Agraual and Kamakura (1995) studied the economic worth of celebrity endorsers and found that investors on average positively valued the use of celebrities in advertisements. In this study, the sponsoring firms were revealed to have an average excessive 44% percentage of returns. Celebrity effects were not only found to increase revenue, but were revealed to “add value to a company, brand or product as well” (Amos et al., 2008).

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In for-profit sector, especially for beauty products, the significance of physical attractiveness of endorsers on the effectiveness of advertisements is highly valued (e.g. Baker and Churchill, 1977; Caballero and Salomon, 1984; Caballero et al., 1989). Petty and Cacioppo (1980) found when consumers are under low processing intensity, physical attractiveness of endorsers plays a role as heuristic cues. This is supported by Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani and Longo (1991) who developed the concept “halo effect” which means that people usually make their judgment by “using a heuristic, or simple decision rule in the form of what is beautiful is good”. Previous studies pointed out particularly that when source congruity —“the match between cognitively accessible endorser associations and attributes associated with the brand” (Kirmani and Shiv, 1998 ) — is high (Fennis and Stroebe, 2010)，physical attractiveness of endorsers affect brand attitudes(Petty and Cacioppo, 1980; Kang and Herr, 2006)

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celebrity endorser and the product” (Amos et al., 2008). Therefore, for the non-profit sector, trustworthy celebrities are expected to be positively associated with higher donation.

To sum up, according to previous studies which have proved the effectiveness of both fundraising marketing and celebrity endorsement, the effectiveness of non-profit ads with celebrities should also be expected in this study.

2.1.3 Attitudes towards nonprofits

Attitudes act as major predictors of consumer behavior (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). They are “evaluations of an attitude object which are based on cognitive, affective and behavioral information” (Fennis & Stroebe, 2010). Brand attitudes, according to Mitchell and Olson (1981), are “attitudes toward the brand as an individual’s internal evaluation of the brand”. So, even though donors’ donation decisions are influenced by a variety of factors, their attitudes towards the brand of non-profit organization are powerful predictors of their donation decisions.

If a non-profit advertisement focuses on the impact of its ambassador, the primary factor that influences donators’ attitudes to the non-profit organization depends on the attitudes of donators to the ambassador. Consumers’ attitudes towards the sponsored brand can, to a large extend, be affected by consumers’ attitudes towards the endorser in an advertisement (Kamins et al, 1989).

In this study, non-profit organizations which needs to raise funds from donors, function similar to the sponsored brand in those commercial advertisements. Therefore, similar effect can be expected in non-profit advertisements endorsed by a celebrity; that is, donators’ attitudes to the non-profit advertisement with celebrity might be more positive and favorable than non-profit advertisement without celebrity.

H1a: Donors exposed to non-profit advertisements with celebrity will have more

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2.1.4 Donation intention

Besides attitude, behavioral intentions, which refer to “the motivation to perform a specific behavior”, are also good predictors of consumer donation behavior (Fennis & Stroebe, 2010). Based on the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1975), intention mediate the impact attitudes have on behaviors. Also, empirical studies have proved that celebrity endorsements contribute to generate “a greater likelihood of consumers’ choosing the endorsed brand” (Heathm McCathy, and Mothersbaugh 1994; Kahle and Homer 1985; Kamins et al.1989; Ohnian 1991).

Thus in this study, donation intention, as a mediator between donators’ attitude and actual donation behavior, is worthwhile to take into consideration. Donors’ intrinsic altruistic desire might be stimulated by the non-profit ads endorsed by celebrities and purchase intentions towards the NPO could be aroused.

H1b: Donors exposed to non-profit advertisements with celebrity will express

higher purchase intentions to the NPO than those who are exposed to an ad with non-celebrity.

2.2 The moderating effect of self-validation

In studies about attitude change, the topic of meta-cognition has also received considerable attention in recent years. Meta-cognition refers to “people’s awareness of the thoughts about their own or hers’ thought processes” (Jost, Kruglanski, and Nelson, 1998; Wright, 2002). Self-validation, as a form of meta-cognitive judgment, is defined as “the subjective confidence consumers have in their thoughts and evaluations in response to persuasive messages” (Fennis and Stroebe, 2010).

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studies have extensively studied how self-validation, or confident thoughts, influences the efficacy of persuasion. Brinol and Petty (2009) argued that “persuasion attempts fail in effect not only as a result of unfavorable thoughts elicited by a message, but also because of consumers’ lack of confidence in the thoughts generated”. Confidence can affect the attitude-thought relationship (Petty et al., 2002). Petty and Briion (2000) have revealed the relationship between thoughts and attitude changes is greater when people “have confidence rather than doubts in their cognitive responses”. According to Brinol et al (2004), the more confident the consumers are about their thoughts , the more effective the ad would be. Previous studies found that self-validation not only affects the effectiveness of communication persuasion, but also have something to do with consumers’ favorability of the ads (e.g. Brinol et al, 2002). A study by Clarkson, Tormala & Leone, (2011) also proved that thought confidence can “play an independent mediating role in the mere thought effect, which in the end polarized the attitude” (Clarkson, Tormala & Leone, 2011).

Although extensive previous studies have focused on the effects of self-validation on communication persuasion, they were mostly discussed in for-profit commercials. However, based on the reasoning of previous studies, self-validation should also be expected to exert similar impact in the non-profit sector, which means self-validation is also expected to play a role in changing donors’ attitude and ultimately eliciting donation behavior. Based on the previous studies, non-profit ads with ambassadors tend to trigger more positive attitudes and higher likelihood of donation. And this pattern might be intensified for consumers with high self-validation.

H2a: Donors with high self-validation exert more positive attitude towards

non-profit ads with celebrity than those who are less confident in their thoughts and evaluations; while the opposite holds for the donors with low self-validation.

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towards non-profit ads with celebrity than those who are less confident in their thoughts and evaluations; while the opposite holds for the donors with low self-validation.

2.3 The moderating effect of impression motivation

A study by Chaiken el al. (1989) has acknowledged the fact that “consumers might not simply wish to form an accurate view when processing the information”. Impression motivation also plays a role in consumers’ information processing process. Chen et al. (1996) defines impression motivation as “the desire to hold attitudes that will satisfy current social goals”. Chaiken et al. (1996) also mentioned in their study that “impression motivation would invoke processing that is guided by selecting in order to be able to express attitudes that will promote current social goals”. In the study by Nienhuis et al. (2001), they defined impression motivation as “a wish to be positively evaluated by others”. They regarded impression motivation as “continuum with two extremes”. At one extreme, individuals care little about others’ reactions to them; while at the other extreme, individuals are highly sensitive to others’ evaluations. According to Fennis and Stroebe (2010), consumers with strong impression motivation refers to “consumers’ desires to hold attitudes and display behavior that will satisfy salient social goals”.

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processing of accuracy-motivated versus impression-motivated individuals and found that “impression-motivated participants tend to take on views more consistent with their partners; while accuracy-motivated participants expressed attitudes more unbiased by the partner’s opinion”. Impression management about “how consumer controls the impressions formed by others” has also been studied (Leary et al., 1990). Further studies have also demonstrated that impression motivation can affect the results of communication persuasions (Chen & Chaiken, 1999). Since the goal of impression-motivated recipients is “to assess the social acceptability” (Fennis and Stroebe, 2010), in this study, it is expected that consumers’ attitude towards the non-profit ads with or without ambassadors and donation intention vary between impression-motivated donors and accuracy donors.

H3a: Donors with high impression motivation express more positive attitude

towards non-profit ad with celebrity; while the opposite holds for those with low impression motivation..

H3b: Donors with high impression motivation tend to have higher donation

intention towards non-profit ad with celebrity; while the opposite holds for those with low impression motivation.

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Figure 1: Conceptual model

Types of non-profit ads (with/without celebrity)

Self-validation

Impression Motivation

Attitudes towards the Nonprofit

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3. Research Design

3.1 Nonprofit and characters

Before the experiment was conducted, an online questionnaire was designed. Dutch cancer foundation KWF was selected as the focal non-profit organization in this experiment. Lance Armstrong was selected as the trustworthy celebrity in this advertisement. He was chosen because he is American former professional road racing cyclist who is also a successful cancer fighter, founder and chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation which is for cancer support. While in the non-profit advertisement without celebrity, an unknown elderly man who has survived the cancer was selected.

3.2 Procedure

A total of 140 male and female respondents participated in this experiment. Respondents including students, workers, and retirees were randomly invited on the social media to participate in online questionnaire. Before the experiment was conducted, every respondent was greeted and asked to read a brief introduction of this experiment. Participants were randomly distributed to two of the online questionnaires. Each respondent could only see one of the advertisements, so they were isolated from each other and completed the questionnaires independently. The experiment lasted around 10 minutes, from the beginning (greeting and introduction) to the end (the moment that the participants summited the answers online).

When respondents clicked on the link for the online questionnaire and before the

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their personal information, including gender, age, and nationality. After completing personal information, each participant was asked to answer the same questions, but they were randomly assigned to one of two different non-profit advertisements before they continue with the questions. One of the advertisements was endorsed by a trustworthy celebrity (Appendix 2) and the other one was endorsed by a non-celebrity (Appendix 3). Both of the characters were successful cancer fighters and they were cycling to raise money for a cancer donation foundation. Participants were asked to rate their attitudes towards the charity and donation intention in a six and four 7-point semantic Likert Scale respectively. Afterwards, participants were asked with a 4-item scale about their confidence towards their answers about the previous two questions (their attitudes and donation intention towards the nonprofit shown in the ad). Then seven consecutive statements about the participants’ impression motivation were presented and participants were asked to rate their opinion (which ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) from 1 to 7. Upon completing the questionnaire, participants were asked to answer some questions for confound checks, including their current mood, their familiarity to the nonprofit, do they donate to the nonprofit shown in the ad, and their familiarity and favorability towards the character presented in the ad.

3.3 Independent variables

Type of ads

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may be raining. It may be hot. It may be tough, even intimidating. But I won’t give up, because millions fight every day and beat cancer.” Words such as “won’t give up” and “beat cancer” were highlighted with capital letters. This was immediately followed by the words calling for raising donation which were highlighted with a white circle (“Would you like to take action to support us? www. Staoptegenkanker.nl”). At the bottom of the ad, there was a brief introduction about who was on the ad (“Lance Armstrong, 41, the winner for Tour de France for seven times, as well as a successful cancer fighter for years.”)

The second advertisement was a non-profit ad without trustworthy celebrity (Appendix 3). This advertisement was structured exactly the same as the first one did. Also it contained the same verbal texts. The only difference is the characters in the advertisement. This advertisement was endorsed by an unknown elderly man who was a successful cancer fighter (non-celebrity). But like the same story told in the first ad, the elderly man in this ad was also riding on a bike in an effort to call for donation for this fund. At the bottom of the ad, the words were changed into the information about the elderly man: “Paul Barden, 61, has been a successful cancer fighter for years.”

3.4 Moderators

Self-validation

Four questions were taken from the study by Briñol et al. (2003) to measure how confident participants were about their previous answers about their attitudes and donation intention. Participants were instructed to rate their confidence on a 7-point Likert scale (1= not at all, 7= very much)

Impression motivation

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3.5 Dependent variables

Attitude to Nonprofit

Donors’ attitude towards non-profit ads with trustworthy celebrity was measured by a 6-item semantic differential scale rating from 1 to 7 (Bad/ Good, Dislikable/Likable, Unpleasant/Pleasant, Unfavorable/Favorable, Negative/Positive, Low Quality/ High Quality) according to Batra and Stayman (1990)

Donation intention

Donors’ donation intention to non-profit ads with trustworthy ad was measured by a 4 item scale. It was based on the 7-point Likert scale used by Bearden et al. (1984) which was established to measure consumer purchase intention of a sponsored brand.

3.6 Confounding variables

Mood

A 4-item semantic differential scale previously used by Barone et al. (2000) was used to measure participants’ mood when they were conducting this questionnaire. Each of the respondents was asked to rate from 1 to 7 (bad mood/ good mood, irritable/pleased, sad/happy, depressed/cheerful).

Familiarity and favorability to the character in the ad

Two 5-point Likert scales were established to measure how familiar the respondents are with character in the ad, and how much they like the character (1= not at all; 7= very much).

Knowledge about the nonprofit in the ad

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4. Results

4.1 General sample Statistics

A total of 140 male and female respondents from the Netherlands (52.9%), Europe (non-Dutch, 10.7%), Asia (31.4%), America (1.7%) and Africa (3.3%) participated in this experiment. Excluding invalid answers such as incomplete questionnaires, 121 questionnaires are valid for this study, including 59 males and 62 females. Respondents including students, workers, and retirees were randomly invited on the social media to participate in the online questionnaire. Among all these participants, slightly over 50% of the respondents were from the Netherlands. And the majority of the respondents were aging from 20-24 (62%), or 25-29 (20.7%). The results can be expected, because the experimenter is a student from University and she did snow ball sampling with a convenience sample.

4.2 Confound check Table 1 Count (Celebrity) Count (Non Celebrity) Sex Male 31 28 Female 30 32 Age Group 15-19 2 2 20-24 37 38 25-29 12 13 30-34 5 3 35-39 1 3 45+ 4 1 Table 2

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20 Table 3 Mean(Celebrity) Mean (Non Celebrity) Self-validation 5.6 5.4 Impression Motivation 3.9 4.1 Mood 4.7 5.1 Familiarity with KWF 2.5 2.7 Do you donate to KWF 2.1 2 Table 4 Levene's Test for Equality of

Variances t-test for Equality of Means

Sig. t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference Self-Validation .343 .559 .928 119.0 .355 .227 .245 Impression .282 .596 -.893 119.0 .374 -.226 .254 Mood .268 .605 -1.240 119.0 .217 -.370 .299

Are you familiar with KWF?

.739 .392 -.564 119.0 .574 -.159 .282

Do you donate to KWF?

.624 .431 .508 119.0 .613 .116 .228

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Mnon-cele = 2.7; p = 0.574) and they both don’t donate to KWF often (Mcele= 2.1, Mnon-cele = 2.0; p= 0.613). In addition, both groups of respondents were under relatively same mood (Mcele = 4.7, Mnon-cele = 5.1; p = 0.217).

4.3 Manipulation check Table 5

Celebrity Non Celebrity

Mean

Do you Know the Person in the Advert 3.0 1.7

Do you Like the Person in the Advert 3.31 3.28

Table 6

Levene's Test for

Equality of Variances t-test for Equality of Means

F Sig. t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference

Do you Know the Person in the Advert

14.152 .000 4.792 119 .000 1.283 .268

Do you Like the

Person in the Advert .971 .326 .136 119 .892 .028 .206

Based on the results shown in Table 5 and Table 6, respondents who participated in the questionnaire with ad endorsed by celebrity were more knowledgeable about the person in the advertisement than respondents who participated in the other questionnaires with ad endorsed by non-celebrity (Mcele = 3.0, Mnon-cele = 1.7; p= 0.000), which is in accordance with what was expected.

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result on one hand is good because participants from both questionnaires have similar liking towards the characters in the ad and they did not hate the celebrity (Lance Armstrong). On the other hand, the results also indicate that respondents just did not like the celebrity in the ad as much as the experimenter expected. In other words, respondents did not show more preference to the celebrity.

4.4 Dependent Variables Table 7

Attitudes Intention

Cronbach's Alpha N of items Cronbach's Alpha N of items

0.906 6 0.92 4

Table 8

Celebrity Non Celebrity

Total Means Attitudes 5,095 5,111 5,103 Intentions 4,238 4,275 4,305 Table 9

Levene's Test for Equality of

Variances

t-test for Equality of Means

F Sig. t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference Std. Error Difference Attitudes 3.253 0.076 -1.024 62 0.31 -0.32292 0.3152 Intentions 0.891 0.349 -0.673 62 0.504 -0.27344 0.40651

As can be seen from Table 7, high Cronbach’s Alpha value for the 6 sub-questions about attitude implies these six questions can be put into one question and results can be seen as one. The same conclusion can be drawn for the four sub-questions about intention as well.

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no significant difference according to Table 9 (p_attitude = 0.310; p_intention = 0.504). According to the results, participants’ attitudes and donation intention were even lower when they were exposed to the ad with celebrity.

4.5 Donors’ attitude towards non-profit ads with trustworthy celebrity According to the results of attitude Linear regression shown in Table 10, no significant main effect of advertisement types on participants’ attitudes was found (Beta = -0.183; p = 0.668). Therefore, H1a is rejected. Moderating effects of both self-validation and impression motivation on the main effect of non-profit ads with celebrity and donor’s attitude change were found insignificant (type of advert *self-validation: Beta = 0.371, p = 0.373; type of advert*impression motivation: Beta = -0.191, p = 0.516); in other words, in general, participants’ self-validation and impression motivation hardly have any influence on their attitudes towards the non-profit ads endorsed by celebrity, which rejects both H2a and H3a.

Considering KWF is a Dutch brand, the results with only Dutch participants taken into consideration could be different. As shown in Table 10, for Dutch participants, the higher impression motivation they have, the more positive attitudes they have towards both types of non-profit advertisements (Beta = 0.352, p = 0.052). It was also found that for Dutch participants the higher self-validation they have, the more positive attitudes they show towards the non-profit advertisements with celebrity (Beta= 0.992, p= 0.094), even though for participants in general, this effect is not significant. Therefore, H2a is only accepted when only Dutch participants are considered.

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All participants Dutch only

Beta Sig Beta Sig

Type of Ad -0,183 0,668 -0.776 0.175

Self-Validation 0,112 0,392 -0.077 0.671

Impression Motivation 0,191 0,16 0.352 0.052

Type of Advert* Self-validation 0,371 0,373 0.992 0.094 Type of Advert* Impression motivation -0,191 0,516 -0.031 0.938

Table 11: results for attitude regression equation

All

participants Dutch only

Beta Sig Beta Sig

Type of Ad -0,424 0,326 -1.146 0,051

Self-Validation 0,131 0,333 -0,118 0,545

Impression Motivation 0,238 0,158 0,271 0,267

Type of Advert* Self-validation 0,186 0,661 0,865 0,157 Type of Advert* Impression motivation -0,346 0,297 0,100 0,829 Liking to the person in the ad -,0870 0,646 0,146 0,628 Type of Advert* Liking to the person in the ad 0,629 0,094 0,398 0,481

4.6 Donors’ donation intentions to non-profit ads with trustworthy celebrity

As can be seen from the results of intention Linear regression (Table 12), no significant main effect of ad types on donation intention was found (Beta = -0.359, p = 0.373), which rejects H1b.

Also, no significant moderating effects of both self-validation and impression motivation on the main effect between non-profit ads with celebrity and donation intention were found. Thus, both H2b and H3b were rejected. But when “ the liking to the person in the ad” was considered, it was found that generally the higher the impression motivation the donors have, the higher the donation intention they show towards both types of non-profit advertisements (Beta= 0.273, p= 0.09).

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higher donation intention they show towards the both types of non-profit advertisements (Beta= 0.319, p= 0.067). Also when “ the liking to the person” was included in the regression, the type of ads was found to negatively affect participants’ donation intentions (Beta = -1.146, p = 0.051), which means for Dutch donors, the type of ads can only evoke their donation intention if they like the person in the ad.

Table 12. results for intention regression equation

Beta Sig Beta Sig

Type of Advert -0,359 0,373 -0.764 0.165

Self-Validation 0,176 0,158 0.019 0.915

Impression Motivation 0,193 0,132 0.319 0.067

Type of Advert* Self-validation -0,072 0,855 0.466 0.408 Type of Advert* Impression motivation 0,430 0,123 0.440 0.257

Table 13. results for intention regression equation

Beta Sig Beta Sig

Type of Advert -0,539 0,193 -0,996 0,085

Self-Validation 0,207 0,110 0,016 0,933

Impression Motivation 0,273 0,09 0,315 0,192

Type of Advert* Self-validation -0,236 0,559 0,338 0,573 Type of Advert* Impression motivation 0,253 0,425 0,453 0,326 Liking to the person in the ad -0,148 0,415 0,008 0,978 Type of Advert* Liking to the person in the

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5. Conclusions and Recommendations

5.1 Conclusions

This paper mainly discusses the advertising effectiveness in the non-profit sector. The main effect of advertisement types on donor’s attitude changes and donation intention was studied. Moderating roles of self-validation and impression motivation were also analyzed.

By conducting linear regression, this study finds that in general, advertisement types can hardly change donors’ attitudes and evoke their donation intention. This result indicates that celebrity endorsement has little effect on effectiveness of nonprofits advertising. For Dutch donors, the celebrity effects could even be negative on both donors’ attitudes and their donation intentions.

It was also found that in general, both self-validation and impression motivation can not influence the effects the non-profit ads with celebrity have on donors’ attitudes and donation intention.

However, for Dutch donors, celebrity endorsement in non-profit ads can positively change donors’ attitude if they have higher self-validation. Also, the favorability of the person in the ad was also found to affect the celebrity endorsement effectiveness for non-profit advertising in this study. The results indicate that whether the participants like the person in the ad can be influential to their ultimate attitudes and donation intentions towards the advertisements. In other words, for Dutch donors, non-profit advertisement endorsed by celebrity can only work better than those endorsed by non-celebrity if participants like the person in the advertisement.

5.2 Discussion

In general, significant results were hardly found for the previous six hypotheses. There are some reasons accounting for this.

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know the brand as well as Dutch respondents does. This is probably the reason why the main effects of the type of ads on both attitudes and donation intention as well as the moderating effect of self-validation on the relationship between non-profit ads with celebrity and attitude change were only significant when only Dutch participants were considered.

Second, nowadays intense competition in the non-profit sector can be seen. A fast-increasing number of charities were founded for various concerns these days, which somehow dazzled the people who would like to give a donation. So advertising recipients, as potential donors, might tend to be loyal to the some nonprofits they have been already familiar with for certain causes. Therefore, for non-profit ads audiences, even though they perceive the nonprofit being advertised is for a good cause and they have favorite attitudes towards it, these ad recipients would probably not have strong donation intention.

Third, the differences between the commercial sector and non-profit sector have to be taken into consideration. The reasons why people give money in these two areas are different. In commercial sector, there are a lot of different tactics that marketers can utilize to appeal to consumers. For example, mentioning seasonal on-sale activities on an ad is very effective for advertisers to appeal to those bargainers to buy those utilitarian products. A beautiful celebrity on the ad is likely to attract consumers to purchase such commercial products as cosmetics and clothing. Therefore in commercial area, consumers tend to be easier persuaded to change their mind and purchase behavior. This is however not the case when it comes to the non-profit section. The ad recipients are not only giving the money, but also giving their goodwill. Most of the time, donors donate merely because they are willing to and they want to do something nice for good reasons, and the individual donation recipients are not even aware of who they are. So donors are prone to be loyal to the nonprofit they know well and trust, and less likely to switch to other nonprofits easily.

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sometimes respondents exposed to non-profit ads with celebrity tend to have very negative attitudes and are more reluctant to donate.

Fifth, respondents’ liking to the person in the ad is also of great importance, according to previous regression analysis. If respondents don’t like the person or are not that into the person on the non-profit ad, they may probably not have a favorite perception of the nonprofit itself as well. That could be the reason why when “liking to the person in the ad” was considered in the attitude linear regression, the results became significant. In this study, it seems that participants don’t like Lance Armstrong as much as the experimenter expected.

5.3 Implications

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choose. Also, if the non-profit marketers really want to use celebrity endorsement, they need to be careful and creative about how to reduce the audiences’ skepticism and make them believe that the celebrities endorse the ad only because they would like to be helpful by stressing in the ad that celebrities do not get paid. But according to this study, it is wiser for non-profit marketers to resort to different approach to appeal to the potential donors, instead of utilizing celebrity endorsements.

5.4 Limitations and Future Research

However, there are also some limitations for this study. First, as an empirical study, the sample size of 121 is not big enough. Second, the selected nonprofit, KWF, is of geographical limitation. Since the respondents were from almost over the world but KWF is a Dutch cancer foundation. So respondents outside the Netherlands were not very familiar with it. Third, according to the results of this research, Lance Armstrong turns out to be a very controversial character. This could affect participants’ attitude and decisions when they were filling in the questionnaires after read the ad endorsed by Lance Armstrong. Fourth, culture difference is not carefully taken into consideration. Fifth, most of the respondents are students. They have limited or no income, so this would affect the donation intention even though they have positive attitude towards the ad.

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Appendix 1

Questionnaire Hello!

My name is Jiaxin and I am a Master student at the University of Groningen. At the momenT I am conducting a study on various attitudes and behaviors towards advertisements used by the nonprofits nowadays. Filling in the questionnaire will take only 10 minutes. I would really appreciate if you dedicate this time, read carefully the presented description of the campaign and answer the questions in accordance with your own opinions.

All the answers to the questions are anonymous and confidential. Thanks in advance!

1. What is your Gender?

A. Male B. Female

2. What is your age?

3. What is your nationality?

4. Do you currently live in the Netherlands?

5. What is your marital status?

A. Single B. Relationship C. Married 6. If you are a student, what is your level of Education? A. Secondary school or VB. B. MB. C. HB. D. University E. Postdoctoral F. I am not a student

7. If you are working, what is your level of gross income per month? A. less than 500 euros

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8. Please rate your attitudes to KWF after you read this advertisement.

Bad 1 2 3 4 5 Good

Dislikable 1 2 3 4 5 Likable

Unpleasant 1 2 3 4 5 Pleasant

Unfavorable 1 2 3 4 5 Favorable

Negative 1 2 3 4 5 Positive

Low Quality 1 2 3 4 5 High Quality

9. Please rate your intention to donate to KWF after you read this advertisement (If you happen to be a student, suppose you have a job that earns you a comfortable income.)

Unlikely 1 2 3 4 5 Likely

Improbably 1 2 3 4 5 Probably

Uncertainly 1 2 3 4 5 Certainly

Definitely Not 1 2 3 4 5 Definitely

10. How much would you donate?

11. Please rate how confident you are about the answers that you gave on the previous page. Not confident at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very confident

Not certain at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very certain Not valid at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very valid Not convincing at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very convincing

Please give your opinion on the following statements.

12. I value the attention and praise of others when they know I donate to a charity. Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly agree

13. I enjoy the praise I often receive for donating to nonprofits.

Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly agree

14. I try to appear kind and generous to others.

15. Being kind and generous is not important to me.

16. Receiving praise after donating to nonprofit s makes me want to donate more. Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly agree

17. I want to be thought as a person who is generous.

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18. I value the attention and praise offered by others in regard to appearing kind and generous Strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly agree

19. Please rate your current mood.

Bad mood 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Good mood

Irritable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Pleased

Sad 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Happy

Depressed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Cheerful

20. Do you donate money to charities?

Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very often

21. Are you familiar with KWF?

Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very much

22. Do you donate to KWF?

Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very often

23. Do you know the person in the ad?

Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very well

24. Do you like the person in the ad?

Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very much

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Donors’ responses to non-profit advertising with and without celebrity: the moderating effects of self-validation and impression motivation