Who's afraid of that ad? Applying segmentation to the protection motivation model

The protection motivation model has contributed usefully to researchers' understanding of fear appeals in advertising. However, the empirical evidence reported to date in the literature has been mixed. This article proposes and tests a revised model including two segmenting variables as a means to resolve some of the differences evident in past research. With the use of data derived from an experimental study of juveniles' response to a range of antismoking advertising treatments, empirical support was found for the mediating role of fear in predicting behavioral intentions and for the influence of individual differences. The results, however, did not confirm the moderating role of response or self-efficacy. Future research is clearly needed to further validate the revised protection motivation model. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.