Framing effects of health education materials on rural public intention for dog vaccination against rabies in China.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Implementing more efficient education about dog vaccination against rabies in rural areas is crucial for rabies prevention and control in China, which is one of the countries most severely affected by rabies. The effectiveness of public education is significantly influenced by the discourse used. Given the paucity of studies examining how different discourse promote intentions to vaccinate dogs against rabies, this study explores the persuasive effectiveness of different goal frames and social norms on rural dog owners’ willingness to vaccinate their dogs and the implication for the practice of health education. METHODS: Based on the goal framing and social norm theories, this study used a 2 × 2 factorial experiment design with 220 participants randomly assigned to different experimental groups. The experiment provided participants with four different videos for rabies vaccination for dogs. A generalized linear model analysis was used to analyze the main effects and interaction effects of the experimental manipulations. RESULTS: The results show that after controlling for prior dog immunization experiences, the education video combined dynamic descriptive norm with a gain frame is more effective in promoting the willingness to vaccinate dogs against rabies compared to combining the dynamic descriptive norm with a loss frame or combining the gain frame with injunctive norm information. CONCLUSION: In promoting dog rabies immunization, using either the gain frame or loss frame alone, or relying solely on dynamic descriptive norm or injunctive social norm alone, does not necessarily produce different effects. However, combining the gain frame with dynamic descriptive norm information can significantly enhance dog owners’ willingness to vaccinate their dogs. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12917-025-05208-7.