Page 93 - 臺大管理論叢第32卷第2期

NTU Management Review
Vol. 32 No. 2 Aug. 2022, 85-122
DOI: 10.6226/NTUMR.202208_32(2).0003

Being Alone Deserves More Sympathy? Influences of Victim
Number, Cause Acuteness and Individual Differences in Self-
Construal on Charitable Advertising Effectiveness

孤伶伶讓人憐？探討受害者數量、慈善議題種類與自我建
構個人差異對慈善廣告效果之影響

Chun-Tuan Chang, Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University
張純端 / 國立中山大學企業管理學系
Yi-Chia Chen, Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University,
ChinaTrust Commercial Bank
陳亦嘉 / 國立中山大學企業管理學系 / 中國信託商業銀行
Chia-Han Chang, Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University,
Thinking Electronic Industrial Co., Ltd.
張佳涵 / 國立中山大學企業管理學系 / 興勤電子工業股份有限公司
Received 2019/8, Final revision received 2022/1

Abstract
In the current research, we propose that the effect of victim number is subject to cause
acuteness and individual differences in self-construal, and conduct three experiments
to test our hypotheses. While Studies 1 and 3 both set in the non-profit context, Study 2
focuses on the context of cause-related marketing, in which the charitable campaign is
initiated by a fictious company. In these three studies, we use a 2 (victim number: single
vs. group) × 2 (cause acuteness: sudden disaster vs. ongoing tragedy) × 2 (self-construal:
interdependent vs. independent) between-subjects design. The results reveal that when
people with interdependent self-construal read a story of a sudden disaster depicting group
victims, the advertising effectiveness is greater than the same story depicting a single
victim. Meanwhile, we find opposite modes of operation on people with independent self-
construal. Nonetheless, we find no such differences of self-construal when participants
read a story of ongoing tragedy depicting either a single victim or group victims.
Additionally, with the focus on investigating the role of guilt in Study 3, we prove that
guilt is the underlying mechanism that explains the three-way interaction effect among
victim number, cause acuteness and self-construal.
【Keywords】charity advertising, identified victim effect, cause acuteness, self-construal,
guilty

領域主編：蔡顯童教授

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