Fear Appeals Reinforcement in Social Marketing and Inducement of Behavioral Change

Pakistan is signatory of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) where promoting good health is at the heart of achieving various goals. Social marketing has earned its credit worthiness quite convincingly in influencing behavior change. It is, however, pertinent to see nature of the challenges that social marketing program tend to address are quite complex and each social problem need to size up with broader social context rather merely using conventional approaches. Number of scholars has questioned approaches that have been barely successful in bringing perceptible improvement. This gap quite pervasive as most of the techniques employed used one way communication, persuasive techniques of communication. The paradigm of participation in social marketing has shown better results in bringing about sustained behavior change. This study uses broad categorization of fear appeals elements using the explanatory power of participatory paradigm to induce behavior change. Study participants were randomly selected from a Public Sector University. The participants were randomly assigned to study intervention. Study participants were given treatment based on fear appeals in groups, based on activity theory. The qualitative data drawn was analyzed using NVIVO. The different themes were explored were grouped into four categories using activity theory like activities produced by artifacts, activities produced by subjects, activities produced by rules and transformational activities. The participatory paradigm using systematic interaction proved key factors to reinforce fear appeals that enhanced the value for social marketing program to achieve sustainable behavior change.