Towards a foundational understanding of message fatigue: a psychological state composed of multiple dimensions, and a phenomenon underpinned by parallel mental processes

Abstract

Health communication practitioners often promote certain healthy behavior via different message formats (e.g., videos, posters, and public service announcements) and through various transmission channels (e.g., seeking news coverage for their health promotions campaigns, sparking social discussions about the promoted behavior). While effective in garnering sufficient exposure, a proliferation of similar messages coalescing around one single theme such as promoting mammography, albeit in different formats, might easily induce a sense of message fatigue. With fatigue generating various outcomes undesirable for population health such as message reactance, dampened information trust, and information avoidance across multiple health domains including COVID-19 vaccination, tobacco prevention, and safe sex education, developing and testing an intervention to circumvent it seems to be the priority for current scholarship. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of such interventions can only be ensured if the construct and phenomenon of message fatigue are well-theorized and fully understood. Therefore, my dissertation delved into two foundational inquiries: 1) the conceptualization and operationalization of message fatigue, and 2) the underlying mechanisms generating and the boundary conditions influencing message fatigue as a phenomenon (i.e., mediators and moderators). Two studies were conducted to address each of the two inquiries respectively. Specifically, Study 1 examined the validity of a newly-developed message fatigue scale from two angles including 1) its internal factorial structure – assessed by a combination of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and 2) its relationship with external construct – examined by convergent, divergent, and nomological validity. Empirical evidence obtained from two different contexts both identified a bifactorial structure of the construct of message fatigue and largely supported the hypothesized relationship between message fatigue and external constructs. Study 2, using a survey-based experiment, tested a model illustrating the underlying mechanisms (i.e., mediators) via which message fatigue arises and the boundary conditions (i.e., moderators) under which it waxes and wanes. Empirical evidence suggested that while perceptions of repeated exposure both directly and indirectly (i.e., via the mediation of perceived familiarity) influenced the cognitive dimensions of message fatigue, such perception had no direct impact on the motivational and emotional aspects of message fatigue, nor did cognitive dissonance mediate the pathways to these dimensions. No moderated mediation effects were observed. The two studies collectively highlight several research implications that eventually enhance our understanding of message fatigue from multiple angles including its fundamental nature (i.e., whether it reflects one’s psychological or physical state), operation level (i.e., whether it functions at message or topic level), and structural characteristics (i.e., higher-order structure or bi-factor structure). Study limitations and future research directions are also discussed.