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The purpose of this paper is to understand how framing messages about earthquake risk affect judgements about legislation requiring the strengthening of earthquake-prone buildings.

Scenarios described the legislation with a general population sample (n=271). Two types of framing effects were examined in a 2 (valence frame: positive or negative or positive) by 2 (numerical format frame: frequency/number or percentage) experimental design.

Scenarios reporting the number of earthquake-prone buildings (negative frequency format) increased support for the earthquake-strengthening legislation more than the same message framed positively (frequency number of resilient building) or as a percentage. Demographic variables such as previous earthquake experience and gender interacted with the framing effects, and other variables also predicted support for the legislation were identified.

These results have direct implications for the use of framing effects messages in communications about earthquake risk and the wider domain.

This is the first study to show that the way the risk is framed affects citizens’ judgement of the value of earthquake legislation.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a sales strategy that is used to improve the success of a product by including a donation to a charitable cause in its price. While marketers can present CRM donations to consumers as either absolute amounts or percentages, the predominant practice in marketing is to use the latter. As the influence of such presentation formats is not well understood, the purpose of this paper is to systematically examine their effects while taking into account the numerical ability (numeracy) of the consumers.

In two experiments, the presentation format of the donation amounts (absolute vs percentage) were manipulated and individual differences in numeracy were measured. The product type (hedonic vs utilitarian) and sales price were varied. We found this effect for high and low price levels and for hedonic and utilitarian products.

The results of both experiments consistently supported the hypothesis presented in this paper that for people with lower numeracy, their purchase intentions were higher when absolute donation amounts were presented. We found this effect for high and low price levels and for hedonic and utilitarian products.

The present paper shows that the current practice of presenting donations in percentages is inferior to presenting donations in absolute amounts because a large number of consumers have trouble interpreting percentages appropriately. Therefore, it indicates that the default option for marketing managers should be to present donations in absolute amounts for hedonic and utilitarian products with low and high prices.

The objective of this paper is to examine the framing effects of discount presentation format in comparative price advertising in a low‐price and a high‐price product context. In particular, the authors study whether identical discounts presented in percentage and absolute terms result in different consumer perceptions of transaction value and purchase intention. Although price promotions have been the subject of previous research, a closer examination of the potential moderating influence of discount size in both contexts is warranted.

Two separate experiments were designed to isolate the effects of the manner in which discounts are numerically expressed and the size of the discount on consumers' perceptions of a retail price promotion in a low‐price and a high‐price product context.

The effects of discount framing in comparative price promotions are found to be influenced by discount size in the case of the low‐product context but not the high‐price one.

It is recommended that the study be replicated for other types of low‐price and high‐price products to confirm the generalisability of the results for each product context.

Retail managers' choice of discount presentation format for both low‐ and high‐price product contexts, and in the case of the former the additional manipulation of discount size, have an impact on the ability of comparative price promotions to accelerate purchases. Meanwhile policy makers should continue to assign significant time and resources to investigating concerns about misleading price comparison based promotions.

The paper provides original insights into the importance of considering the joint effects of discount presentation format and discount size on consumers' perceptual and behavioural responses to retail price promotions, unlike previous research, which has examined these framing effects separately.

This chapter addresses adaptation to dynamic, novel and uncertain military environments. These environments require a shift from a maneuver warfare paradigm to an asymmetric world where shifting alliances, questionable civilian loyalties, opaque cultures, and the requirement to maintain peace one day and combat the next makes for a particularly confusing situation. This new warfare paradigm requires adaptation to an uncertain, complex environment.

The initial section discusses a general cognitive model of visualization called RAVENS and its importance for adaptation developed specifically to address complex military environments. RAVENS posits that humans are inherently flexible decision makers and situation awareness depends on the ability of humans to create narrative visualizations that capture the overall context of complex military environments. Using the framework as a guideline, we will examine two important visualization research programs whose purpose is to allow military operators to rapidly adapt to volatile situations. The first program investigates cognitive effects such as the framing bias and their possible interactions with a variety of display concepts during a series of missile defense simulations. The experimenters presented risk as a spatial representation of uncertainty and target value that emphasized either expected population lost or expected population saved. The second program investigated the feasibility of using visualizations generated from Scheherazade (a coevolutionary algorithm) to aid MI analysts in predicting emergent tactics of terrorist groups during urban operations. Finally, we discuss the value of these approaches for providing coherent narrative understanding as called for in the RAVENS model.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between consumer risk perceptions and behaviour when information about food risks is framed in a positive or negative way.

Using food consumption scenarios in an on-line experiment consumers perceived risk and risk tolerance is examined when messages are framed in three different news-type stories.

As anticipated, message framing emerged as a significant predictor of perceived risk and the higher an individual’s self-reported tolerance of risk, the more risk they were willing to accept.

The use of hypothetical scenarios and relatively small convenience sample size could be improved by further research.

Through simple adjustments to wording, food crises of confidence may be reduced and the implications for communication management strategies are discussed.

Originality stems from being one of the first papers to use Framing and Prospect Theory in a food crisis situation, in which both risk and framing are operationalised in different ways and the risk was not specified by the researcher. Also, unlike previous research identical numerical facts were framed in a positive, negative or neutral light by changing the wording.

Previous research indicates that the goals consumers have when shopping influence their attention to and processing of information they encounter. The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of consumers' pre‐purchase goals on their responses to price promotions.

In three experiments, the existence of consumer goals (i.e. with or without a pre‐purchase goal) were manipulated and promotion characteristics including message framing, promotion format, and promotion depth were systematically varied to examine how consumers respond to these price promotions.

Consumers with a pre‐purchase goal were found to be more attracted to the promotion than those without a goal. More importantly, pre‐purchase goals interact with promotion characteristics and produce differential effects on willingness to buy. Consumers with a pre‐purchase goal are more attracted to promotions emphasizing reduced losses while those without a goal responded more favorably toward promotions emphasizing gains. Moreover, consumers with and without a pre‐purchase goal respond differently to various discount levels.

Existing research on price promotions has not examined the influence of consumers' pre‐purchase goals. This paper brings a new dimension to price promotion research. Understanding these variations in pre‐purchase goals across consumers will help sellers design more effective promotion programs

The purpose of this paper is to review evidence related to the factors that influence people's understanding of health information and how miscommunication of health information can jeopardize people's health.

A literature review was conducted of English language articles, cited in major literature databases from the last 40 years, which describe factors related to comprehension of health information. A total of 93 articles were included.

The paper finds that health communication should take into consideration the role of the following factors on the processing and interpretation of health information: health literacy, format presentation of information, and human cognitive biases and affective/personal influences.

Health communication is a major component of health care. Every health care encounter involves exchange of information, which is intended to enhance people's knowledge in order to assist them to make an informed decision about their health care. However, the mere act of providing information does not guarantee comprehension. People's comprehension of information depends on several factors, including health literacy and numeracy skills, the format presentation of health information and human cognitive biases in the information processing and interpretation. Ineffective health communication can result in a wide range of direct and indirect health consequences including failure to understand and comply with treatment, poorer health status, increased risk of injuries, increased hospitalization, and decreased use of preventive services.

This paper provides health professionals and educators with an overview of important issues related to health communication and highlights strategies that facilitate effective communication to help people to make informed decisions about their health care.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the framing of numbers may be related to the distance between the information provider and information users.

The design of the paper is a case study, in an organizational situation where there are perceived problems in producing stable inscriptions for reporting to users at a distance. The study focuses on the top management level in a small‐sized publicly‐funded theater. The qualitative research design incorporates interviews, observations and document analysis.

The paper illustrates how knowledge and understanding of the circumstances of measurement form a substantial part of what constitutes “distance” between an accounting user and the referred context. It is argued that the framing of numbers may be utilized as a means to control action at a distance. The findings also imply that the use of measurements regarding intangibles may be perceived as useful for purposes beyond internal management.

The paper contributes in two ways to prior research on accountability relations and accounting as an enabler of action at a distance: it elaborates on what constitutes a distance, and it also adds an emphasis on reciprocal behavior by the provider of information in an accountability relation.

The purpose of this paper is to understand consumers’ preferences for answers about sexually transmitted diseases on social question and answer (Q&A) sites by employing message features and information sources as conceptual frameworks.

The study compared best answers selected by questioners with their randomly drawn counterpart non-best answers on Yahoo! Answers as a paired sample (n=180).

The findings indicate that questioners on social Q&A sites were more likely to prefer answers including message features such as numeric information, social norms, optimistic information, and loss-framing, as well as information sources that featured expertise, references, and links to other websites. Pessimistic information was negatively associated with questioners’ preference for answers.

The study extended the discussion of consumers’ selection of best answers to message features and information sources as additional criteria.

The findings suggest that answerers on social Q&A sites communicate more effectively with their audiences by utilizing persuasive communication.

There is a quality issue on social Q&A sites. The findings will be helpful for health professionals to develop answers that are more likely to be selected as best answers, which will enhance overall quality of health information on social Q&A sites.

Consumers’ preference criteria for health information have been investigated using many different approaches. However, no study has used a persuasion framework to examine how consumers appraise answer quality. The present study confirmed consumers’ preference criteria as found in previous social Q&A studies and extended the discussion of consumers’ perceptions of answer quality by applying the frameworks of message features and information sources.

This chapter traces the development of the pricing research program of Kent Monroe, beginning with his doctoral dissertation and continuing to the present time. Drawing on psychophysics and adaptation-level theory the early research efforts concentrated on validating two important concepts relative to behavioral pricing research: reference price and acceptable price range. Then the behavioral pricing research program expanded to explore how the context of a purchase situation, including the structure of the prices available for judgment, influences buyers' price perceptions and willingness to buy. In the early years his research included pricing models and research on patronage behavior. Subsequently, concentrating primarily on behavioral pricing research, he began to integrate findings from the research program into examining how various sellers pricing strategies and tactics influence buyers' judgments and purchase decisions. These efforts led to the first edition of his book Pricing – Making Profitable Decisions published in 1979. The book was subsequently revised and expanded in 1990 and again in 2003.