Classic health communication theory and organic food promotion : does protection motivation theory apply to non-traditional remedies?

This paper presents an exploratory study of the persuasiveness of fear appeals on potential organic foods consumers. Protection Motivation Theory (Rogers, 1983) is used as a theoretical framework, and its components--perceived vulnerability, perceived severity, response efficacy, self-efficacy, protection motivation, and behavioral intent--suggests three main hypotheses concerning attitudes, protection motivation, and behavioral intent. To test these, a two-condition between-participants experiment (N=34) was run comparing attitudes between those who were exposed to print advertisements to a control group