Environmental Social Advertising. The Power of the Message, Controversies and Factors Determining its Effectiveness in an Intergenerational Approach

Resumen

Environmental protection is one of the main challenges of our time. Public awareness campaigns can offer a significant support in dealing with this issue. The aim of the present study was to analyse relationships between the assessment of audio-visual messages (public awareness advertisements) pertaining to environmental protection and selected demographic characteristics of respondents associated with the generation they belong to (BB, X, Y and Z). The study sample included 600 individuals who were shown selected advertisements and then asked to complete survey questionnaires. When carrying out the empirical analysis, we used a test for the equality of two proportions to determine the significance of differences between group proportions. We also analysed the relationship between the perceived effectiveness and controversiality of the advertising messages and the degree of interest in environmental protection issues. The results indicate that audio-visual environmental advertising evokes similar emotions, albeit of different intensity, in the representatives of different generations. The intensity of these emotions tended to increase with the age of respondents. The predominant emotion was sadness and the least frequent one fear. The advertising messages analysed were considered to be controversial by one-third of all participants, the exception being the anti smog campaign. The attitude of respondents towards environmental protection is of moderate importance for their assessment of advertising message effectiveness. The results offer a significant insight into public awareness campaigns focusing on environmental protection, thus providing a valuable foundation for effective activities of institutions and enterprises involved in designing such advertisements.