Emotions and prosocial behaviours: A study of the effectiveness of shocking charity campaigns

Abstract

This article analyses the effect of negative emotions and empathy generated by emotional charities’ campaigns on several indicators of advertising effectiveness. The results show that in the context of prosocial behaviours, negative emotions elicited by the campaign enhance the persuasion and this effect is partly transmitted by the empathic response. In addition, three cognitive variables (efficacy of the solution, self-efficacy and cause involvement) interact with negative emotions through a moderated mediation process. The implications of these results that contrast with the literature are then discussed.