关键词: 食物节约意愿, 信息框架, 焦虑感, 信息加工深度, 自我评价

Abstract: With the promotion of the concepts of resource conservation and sustainable development, the issue of food waste has received increasing attention. Governments and enterprises commonly communicate with the public through public service advertisements (PSA) to advocate saving food. Message framing is a crucial tool to improve the effectiveness of advertisements. Existing studies believe that message framing has a significant impact on individual decision-making, but little attention has been paid to its impact on food saving. Especially, the previous studies have generally ignored the possible influence of anxiety, which is an important psychological factor that determines individual information processing, psychological response, and behavior. In the context of food-saving PSAs, this study firstly proposes a matching effect between anxiety and message framing on food-saving intention. On the basis of the Processing Efficiency Theory and the Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP), it explores the influence of message framing (approach-framed vs. avoidance-framed) on food-saving intention combining with anxiety from the perspective of limited cognitive resources. This study further discusses the underlying mechanisms in the view of both information processing and affective reaction, putting forward that the depth of processing and self-evaluation mediate the matching effect between anxiety and message framing on food-saving intention.
This study examines the hypotheses with 3 experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 tested the matching effect between message framing and anxiety on the food-saving intention by measuring (Experiment 1) and manipulating (Experiment 2) the anxiety level of the subjects. Experiment 3 examined the mediating roles of the depth of processing and self-evaluation and their serial mediating effect. The results of three experiments revealed that: (1) message framing and anxiety have a significant interaction effect on food-saving intention. Specifically, approach-framed (versus avoidance-framed) PSAs could increase the food-saving intention of individuals with a high level of anxiety. On the contrary, individuals with low anxiety show a higher food-saving intention when the PSAs employ avoidance-framed (versus approach-framed) messages. (2) The depth of processing and self-evaluation play significant mediating roles in the matching effect between anxiety and message framing on food-saving intention. (3) The interaction effect could be serially driven by the depth of processing and self-evaluation.
This study reveals that anxiety serves as a critical factor that influences the effectiveness of PSA message framing on food-saving intentions. This study is among the first to systematically elaborate on the influence of message framing on food-saving intention under different levels of anxiety. The conclusion contributes a new perspective to understanding the relationship between message framing and food-saving intention. It also expands the research of anxiety and message framing by combining the two research streams. This study further investigates the internal mechanisms from the lens of depth of processing and self-evaluation. It provides new explanatory mechanisms for the influence of message framing and anxiety on food-saving intentions and enriches existing research on depth of processing and self-evaluation. The conclusions also have important practical significance to guide the government and enterprises to formulate effective PSA strategies and to comprehensively advocate for the public to practice food-saving.

Key words: food-saving intention, message framing, anxiety, depth of processing, self-evaluation