The Relative Persuasiveness of Gain- and Loss-Framed Messages for Promoting Vaccination: A Meta-Analytic Review

Vaccination against disease is a powerful public health tool, and persuading people to be vaccinated is a correspondingly important challenge. A number of studies have compared the effectiveness of gain-framed and loss-framed appeals in this domain, often expecting gain-framed appeals to be more persuasive. A meta-analytic review (k = 32, N = 11,814), however, finds no significant difference in the persuasiveness of gain-and loss-framed appeals for encouraging vaccination. This conclusion is unaffected by differences in the phrasing of the outcomes invoked or by differences in the specific vaccination advocated. But the results contain a hint that parents might be more persuaded to vaccinate their children by loss-framed than by gain-framed appeals. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.