Let's Get Physical: Source and Frame Effects in Exercise Messages to College-Aged Women

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of message source and message framing in exercise messages targeted at college-aged women. This study examines how different types of source (corporate, government, or social media influencer) and different message frames (short-term and long-term gain-frame) affect an individual's attitudes and intentions toward exercise. A 3-by-2 cross-sectional experiment involving 111 female undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota exposed participants to one of six messages and then measured participants' perceived value of exercise, perceived benefit of exercise, and intentions to exercise. The findings revealed that the government source had a significant effect ( F (2, 108) = 3.84, p = 0.03) on participants' perceived benefit of exercise compared to the corporate or social media influencer sources. However, there were no main effects of the message frames on individual’s attitudes and intentions toward exercises. The observations from this study provide insights for individuals and agencies looking to increase exercise participation among young women through social marketing or health communication campaigns. Further, this study lays the groundwork for future research into the little-explored fields of source type and temporal distance in exercise messages as well as the opportunities that new media and social media influencers influencers offer as a potential tool for social marketing campaigns.