Designing Guilt into Social Distancing Posters to Promote Compliance During a Pandemic

This study examined the effects of poster design components on guilt response, the moderating effect of clarity of purpose between the design attributes and guilt response, and the effect of guilt appeals on social distancing behavioral intention. In this research, poster design attributes such as background color and textual components were manipulated in terms of hue, color saturation, and message type in creating different stimuli for the actual experiment. A 2 (hue) × 3 (saturation) × 3 (message type) between-subjects experiment was conducted. Eighteen (18) stimuli were evaluated by 126 participants through accomplishing a survey questionnaire with constructs and indicators assessing clarity of purpose, guilt response, and social distancing behavioral intention. Analysis of variance was done to determine the effects of hue, saturation, textual components, and the moderating effect of clarity of purpose on guilt response which showed that red hue, anticipatory message type, and the interaction between these two factors had significant positive effects on guilt response. However, results presented that interaction between hue and saturation had no significant effect on guilt and clarity of purpose had no moderating effect between the design attributes and guilt response. On the other hand, structural equation modelling analysis of guilt response and social distancing behavioral intention indicated that guilt response had a direct significant positive effect on social distancing behavioral intention.