NEOMA Business School
Ph.D VIVA ANNOUNCEMENT
Márcia Maurer Herter
will defend publicly her Ph.D dissertation to get the Ph.D degree
on 10th December, at NEOMA Business School, Paris Campus, 9 Rue d'Athènes,
Paris, Room 301, at 14:00
“HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF EMOTIONAL CONSTRUALS:
CONSTRUAL LEVEL, MESSAGE APPEAL, AND EMOTIONS”
Ph.D Committee :
Jury Chairman:
Tamym ABDESSEMED, PhD
Professor, ICN Business School, France
Supervisor:
Adilson BORGES, PhD
Professor, NEOMA Business School, France
Examiners:
Barry BABIN, PhD
Professor, Louisiana Tech University, USA
Pierre VOLLE, PhD
Professor, Université Paris-Dauphine, France
Other members:
Pierrick GOMEZ, PhD
Professor, NEOMA Business School, France
“HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF EMOTIONAL CONSTRUALS:
CONSTRUAL LEVEL, MESSAGE APPEAL, AND EMOTIONS”
Abstract
Social marketing campaigns generally use two types of message appeal—emotional
and rational. The literature, however, offers inconsistent results regarding the
effectiveness of these message appeals. Some research suggests that messages
employing emotional appeal can increase consumers’ health behavioral intentions,
whereas other research concludes that rational appeal is more effective. Moreover,
the role of specific emotions on health behavioral intentions remains unclear. This
dissertation explores these two questions and assesses which types of message
appeal (rational vs. emotional) and emotions social marketing campaigns should use
to increase health behavioral intentions. Drawing on construal level theory, this
dissertation proposes two streams of research: “Message Appeal and Construal
Level” and “Specific Emotions and Construal Level.” The stream “Message Appeal
and Construal Level” analyzes the effects of construal level and message appeals
(emotional vs. rational) on consumers’ health behavioral intentions. Results from
two studies suggest that emotional rather than rational appeals increase health
behavioral intentions for consumers using abstract construal mindset. In addition,
emotional and rational appeals have a similar impact on health behavioral intentions
for consumers using a concrete construal mindset. The second stream “Specific
Emotions and Construal Level” examines the relationship between construal level
and specific emotions in terms of valence (positive vs. negative) and orientation
(approach vs. avoidance) on health behavioral intentions. Specifically, two
additional studies indicate that abstract (vs. concrete) construal increases health
behavioral intentions for emotional congruence (vs. incongruence), for example
negative-avoidance (vs. negative-approach) emotions. This dissertation also
provides evidence for the mediation effect of self-esteem. Specifically, in abstract
(vs. concrete) construal, emotional congruence has a positive impact on participants’
self-esteem, which, in turn, increases health behavioral intentions. By doing so, this
dissertation contributes to the theory on message appeal, emotions, and construal
level. This dissertation concludes by discussing implications for theory and practice
as well as future research directions.
Keywords: message appeal, emotions, emotional valence, emotional orientation,
construal level theory, health behavioral intentions.