A Path Toward a More Understandable Advertising Disclosure for Children

Abstract

Children are heavily confronted with advertising messages in their media environments. Given the emotional nature of contemporary advertising and children’s still developing cognitive skills, young consumers are hardly able to cope critically with advertising attempts. So that children are able to detect the persuasive intent, advertising disclosures are viewed as potential supportive measures to mitigate harm that excessive advertising might cause to children. However, the effects of advertising disclosures on children’s awareness of persuasion, i.e., “persuasion knowledge,” appear to be mixed. Moreover, scholars of this research field lack a consensus about what kind of determining factors play important roles in terms of children’s persuasion knowledge activation through disclosures. The present study builds on persuasion knowledge literature and investigates whether the factors identified in this research field can be also transferred to advertising disclosures. The results of a literature review of previous disclosure research show that disclosures might need specific ‘features’ so that advertising disclosures can be effective among children. Furthermore, not all children appear to be equally likely to grasp the meaning of disclosures. However, individual factors other than age might be more important in this context, including environment and situation. Finally, opportunities for future research are discussed.