With the growth and popularity of the Internet and social media sites, government agencies have sought to adopt information and communication technologies to increase transparency of the policies they promote (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010). Owing to its merit of being free of charge, as well as the advantage of having great impact without territorial limitations (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), social media have proved effective in dissemination of social and economic policies (Leavey, 2013). Additionally, more exploration of online persuasion processes is encouraged by academia, as individuals’ political attitudes are likely to be influenced in the social media context (Weeks, Ardèvol-Abreu, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2017). The elaboration likelihood model (ELM; Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983) has been viewed as a solid theoretical framework for research work on persuasion and it has been further suggested that the ELM should be a framework within which to investigate persuasion in the context of social media (Teng, Khong, & Goh, 2014). Although researchers have previously argued that social media are a unique communication platform, and users’ attitudes toward political information could be influenced by information posted on social media (Diehl, Weeks, & Zúñiga, 2016), there is still little evidence in the extant literature concerning the effect of policy information on social media in the sport context.

As most government agencies in Taiwan and other democratic nations support sport policy through using public funding, it becomes critical for policy makers to communicate effectively with the public. More specifically, Houlihan and Zheng (2013) suggested that governments should be more cautious about justifying their decision to the public in the aspect of sport policy funding in the future as the issue of opportunity cost of sport policy funding may be a concern for the public. For example, if government subsidizes sport, public funding cannot be used on other policies such as education; this is called opportunity cost. Furthermore, sport policies seemed to be fragmented as a result of the difficulty in articulating the policy initiatives (Schut & Collinet, 2016), implying that the communication techniques utilized by government agencies are critical. In the era of social media, it is a matter of urgency that the effect of communication of sport policy in social media should be investigated. Moreover, there is currently scant literature available about the effect of communication of sport policy in the social media context. With the increasing popularity of sport as well as of social media worldwide and a lack of sufficient attention to public acceptance of sport policies (Funahashi, De Bosscher, & Mano, 2015), it is imperative to examine the effect of communication of sport policy in the social media environment. As a result, the purpose of our study was to explore through the ELM the effect of different persuasion methods on individuals’ attitudes toward sport policies in the context of social media.

Theoretical Background and Hypothesis Formation

In this research we used the ELM as a theoretical framework to explain the effects of different persuasion methods on individuals’ attitudes toward sport policies because the ELM is deemed a feasible and useful approach to elucidate the persuasive information process in the social media context (Teng et al., 2014). The proposition in the ELM is that an individual’s attitudes can be changed by two distinctly different routes to persuasion: a central route and a peripheral route (Petty et al., 1983). Attitude change via the central route is viewed as resulting from a person’s diligent consideration of information that is central to the merits of a particular attitudinal position. Attitude changes occur via the peripheral route because the individual makes an inference about the advocated position based on simple cues in the persuasion context (Petty et al., 1983).

In the context of elite sport, the successful development of a system depends greatly upon a high level of public support (Houlihan & Zheng, 2013). The promotion of elite sport as a national strategy has been justified based on individual and team successes in major international sport competitions (Funahashi et al., 2015). In a series of studies researchers have found numerous beneficial outcomes of successful elite sport policy, including economic development (Houlihan & Green, 2008), international prestige (Grix & Carmichael, 2012), international and diplomatic recognition (Houlihan & Green, 2008), and national identity and belonging (Hong, 2011). In their work, Funahashi et al. (2015) empirically examined the social–psychological antecedents pertinent to public acceptance of elite sport policy in Japan, but how to communicate the sport policy effectively to the public remained an untapped area. As such, in our study we adopted the ELM to investigate empirically how to persuade the public effectively in their attitude toward sport policy in the social media context.

As academic work on the public’s attitude toward sport policy is scarce, we have cited literature that is highly relevant to behavior of users of social media to support the proposed hypotheses conceptually. For instance, a smartphone-delivered intervention in a chronic-pain-rehabilitation context in which diaries and personalized feedback were used was effective in preventing increases in functional impairment for female patients (Kristjánsdóttir et al., 2013), implying that a smartphone-delivered intervention is an effective communication channel. Additionally, results in a study regarding teenagers’ consumption behavior indicated that much of the content they posted on social media was photographs and links (Herring & Kapidzic, 2015), meaning that information that requires more cognitive effort is preferred among teenagers. Furthermore, researchers have argued that young consumers may be more inclined than are people in older age groups to engage in multitasking on the Internet (Bardhi, Rohm, & Sultan, 2010), suggesting that less intensive content may be preferred for young individuals. As a result, in previous literature scholars have argued that individuals may prefer less intensive messages compared to information-abundant messages. The following hypotheses were proposed based on the preceding reasoning.
Hypothesis 1: Both peripheral- and central-route persuasion will be more effective than no persuasion regarding sport policy communication in the social media context.
Hypothesis 2: Peripheral-route persuasion will be more effective than central-route persuasion regarding sport policy communication in the social media context.

According to the ELM it is assumed that people take the central route for persuasion under the condition of high involvement and take the peripheral route instead under the condition of low involvement (Petty et al., 1983; Solomon, 2018). Involvement refers to individuals’ perceived relevance of the object based on their inherent needs, values, and interests (Zaichkowsky, 1994). Under the high-involvement condition, individuals are more motivated to devote the cognitive efforts required to evaluating the merits of an issue, thus the central route is deemed to be effective in persuasion of highly motivated consumers. In contrast, in a condition of low involvement, individuals engage in little thought and their information processing is limited, thus the peripheral route works better in persuasion of these consumers (Petty et al., 1983). These outcomes infer that involvement moderates the relationship between persuasion routes and consumers’ attitudes. In the sport context, in particular, it has been argued that involvement is an important construct that is highly related to a sport consumer’s attitude toward sport (Funk, 2008), suggesting that more involved individuals often reveal a more favorable attitude toward sport than do less involved individuals. As such, our third hypothesis was proposed to explore the moderating effect of involvement on the routes to persuasion.
Hypothesis 3: Under the condition of a high involvement of the sport consumer, the central route to persuasion will be more effective than the peripheral route in the social media context for sport policy communication.

Method

Participants

Two separate studies were conducted to increase the generalizability of the effect across different populations. In Study I we recruited 111 students at the National Taiwan Sport University by posting on a student website, and in Study II participants were 120 members of the general public. In Study I, there were 64 women (58%) and 47 men (42%); all the students were aged between 21 and 30 years. In Study II, there were 62 women (52%) and 58 men (48%); 49% of the participants were aged between 31 and 40 years, followed by 20% aged between 41 and 50 years, 19% aged 51 years and older, and 12% aged from 21 to 30 years. Information for recruiting these participants was posted on the social media site LINE to invite voluntary participation. Among the entire population of 23 million people in Taiwan, 21 million active users of LINE were reported in the year 2018 by the Taiwanese electronic news medium, Business Next, implying an extremely high nationwide usage rate (91.3%) of LINE. Participants received a convenience store gift card of NT100 (US$3.30) after completing the online survey. This research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee supervised by National Taiwan University.

Procedure

For both studies the participants were each randomly assigned to one of three persuasion groups (central route vs. peripheral route vs. no-persuasion group). All the participants were informed what the study was about and the benefits they would get after completing the survey, and invited to join the chatroom of the social networking site LINE set up by the research team. After accepting the invitation to the chatroom, participants were given the link developed by the research team. The participants were given the critical information in the consent form before actually filling out the survey. The participants sent us the information they were providing upon the completion of the survey.

Research Setting and Experimental Treatments

Sport policies in this research refer to the elite sport policies currently being implemented by Sport Administration, Ministry of Education in Taiwan, including cultivation of grassroot athletes, development of collegiate sports, cultivation of potential elite athletes, training programs for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and cultivation of coaching professionals. Three treatments were developed and presented; they were central-route persuasion, peripheral-route persuasion, and no persuasion. For example, for the policy of cultivation of grassroot athletes, the central-route persuasion was designed to provide participants with as much information as possible regarding the policy, such as, “The government agencies have helped establish 1,833 training stations nationwide, cultivated more than 40,429 athletes (including 3,827 indigenous athletes), provided high schools with competition expenses, subsidized 21 cities, 410 training stations as well as sports equipment for 10,366 athletes, and assisted in training 3,800 coaches.” On the contrary, the peripheral-route persuasion for cultivation of grassroots athletes was designed to present the policy along with a well-known Taiwanese gold medalist of artistic gymnastics in the 2017 Taipei Universiade. The presentation of this policy for the no-persuasion group was designed to present information regarding health and diet, which was irrelevant to the actual sport policy.

Measures

In addition to demographic variables, the measures utilized in this study included involvement in, and attitude toward, the sport policy. The items we used to assess involvement and attitude were adopted from the work of Zaichkowsky (1994) and MacKenzie and Lutz (1989) and responses were rated on a 7-point semantic differential scale (e.g., 1 = unimportant, 7 = important; 1 = unpleasant, 7 = pleasant). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the measurements used in the study were of acceptable validity and reliability (Table 1).

Manipulation Check

To verify the content validity of the treatments designed in this study a panel of three experts who specialized in sport management were invited to review them qualitatively to ensure they were effective. In addition, we recruited 40 people to take part in a manipulation check on the statement “The message requires my diligent consideration in processing the information regarding sport policy,” which they rated on a 5-point Likert scale where 1 = disagree strongly and 5 = agree strongly. The result of an independent sample t test indicated a valid manipulation for the treatment (M_central = 4.55; SD_central = 0.51; M_peripheral = 2.85; SD_peripheral = 0.49; t(38) = 10.75, p < .01).

Data Analysis

Descriptive statistics and two-way analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) were performed for data analysis using SPSS 17.0. Prescores and postscores of attitude toward sport policy were incorporated in the model as a covariate and the dependent variable, respectively. The three methods of persuasion (none, central, and peripheral) were included as the independent variable in the model. Furthermore, involvement was incorporated in the model as a moderator. Nonhierarchical k-means cluster analysis was conducted on the involvement scales to classify the participants into high- versus low-involvement groups for college students in Study I (F_{1, 109} ranged from 44.87 to 121.33, p < .01) and for the nonstudent sample in Study II (F_1,118 ranged from 26.49 to 180.37, p < .01).

Results

In Study I (college student sample) the result of the two-way ANCOVA was significant, F_2,104 = 6.17, p = .003, partial η₂ = .10; the score for attitude toward sport policy for the peripheral-route-persuasion group (M_peripheral = 5.41; SD_peripheral = 0.13) was greater than that for central-route group (M_central = 4.94; SD_central = 0.12; p = .03) and for the no-persuasion group (M_control = 4.79; SD_control = 0.12, p = .003). However, there was no significant difference between the central-route and no-persuasion groups for attitude toward sport policy. Furthermore, the interaction effect between persuasion method and involvement was not significant, F_2,104 = 0.30, p > .05, partial η² = .01, implying that involvement did not moderate the persuasion–attitude relationship. Therefore, H1 was partially supported, H2 was supported, and H3 was not supported (Table 2).

In Study II with the nonstudent sample, the result of the two-way ANCOVA was significant, F_2,113 = 7.94, p = .001, partial η₂ = .12; the scores for attitude toward sport policy for the peripheral-route group (M_peripheral = 5.15; SD_peripheral = 0.29; p = .003) and for the central-route group (M_central = 5.18; SD_central = 0.21; p = .002) were greater than that for the no-persuasion group (M_control = 4.17; SD_control = 0.20). However, there was no significant difference in attitude toward sport policy between peripheral-route and central-route groups (p = .499). Moreover, the interaction effect between persuasion method and involvement was not significant (F_2,113 = 0.90, p > .05, partial η₂ = .01), suggesting that involvement did not moderate the persuasion–attitude relationship. Thus, H1 was supported whereas H2 and H3 were not supported (Table 3).

Discussion

The effect of communication via social media regarding sport policy on public acceptance of the policy is of importance for government agents, but little research has been conducted to establish which persuasion intervention method (central route vs. peripheral route) is more effective. Using ELM as the underlying theoretical framework, in a study conducted with two samples drawn from different populations we investigated the effect that using the central route and the peripheral route as the frame for persuasion had on people’s attitude toward a sport policy.

Two critical findings emerged. First, although a slight difference was indicated between the student participant group (Study I) and the nonstudent group (Study II) in the findings for our hypothesis that both peripheral- and central-route persuasion would be more effective than no persuasion regarding sport policy communication in the social media context (H1), the finding implies that using the social media platform to persuade people was effective in communicating sport policy (i.e., attitude toward sport policy). This is in line with the work of Kristjánsdóttir et al. (2013), who suggested that a smartphone-delivered intervention was an effective communication channel. Our finding also underlined the importance of sport policy initiatives being clearly articulated to justify the public funding allocated to sport policy (Houlihan & Zheng, 2013; Schut & Collinet, 2016).

Second, in our study peripheral-route persuasion was more effective than central-route persuasion for college students (Study I), indicating that students may prefer simplified information, which coincides with the arguments that teenagers prefer a message that will not take much time to read through, such as photographs and links (Awan & Gauntlett, 2013; Bardhi et al., 2010; Herring & Kapidzic, 2015). However, the effect of central- and peripheral-route persuasion on the participants’ attitude toward sport policy differed across the different target audiences in our two studies, which resulted in our second hypothesis that peripheral-route persuasion would be more effective than central-route persuasion regarding sport policy communication in the social media context being supported in Study I (college student participants), but not being supported in Study II (nonstudent participant group). The peripheral-route persuasion was more effective for the student sample than was the central-route persuasion. This may be pertinent to the fact that young consumers engage in multitasking activities when using social media (Awan & Gauntlett, 2013; Bardhi et al., 2010) and use fewer cognitive resources on a single message. For the nonstudent sample, despite there being no difference in attitude toward sport policy between peripheral- and central-route persuasion, both peripheral- and central-route persuasions were equally effective in policy communication in comparison with the no-persuasion (control) group.

Third, among our participants, involvement did not moderate the persuasion–attitude relationship, failing to support our third hypothesis that under the condition of a high involvement of the sport consumer, the central route to persuasion would be more effective than the peripheral route in the social media context for sport policy communication. This finding is inconsistent with that reported by Petty et al. (1983) that more involved individuals exert more cognitive effort in the context of advertising. This discrepancy may arise from the fact that the scores for involvement in the current study appear relatively high, leading to the nonsignificant effect of involvement.

Contributions of the Present Study

From the theoretical perspective, the effect of communication on sport policy through the ELM was revealed, which has enriched the research field of sport communication in regard to communicating sport policy in social media. From the practical viewpoint, findings derived from different populations can be critical references for government agencies to communicate sport policy effectively to the public.

Implications and Limitations

From our results in the current study, it appears that social media communication exerts a positive impact on public acceptance of sport policy. Government agents may adopt the findings from this research to customize persuasion interventions to influence their target audience effectively. One limitation that may apply in this research is that random sampling may be difficult to implement in the context of social media. This warrants further research efforts. Furthermore, in future studies, the moderating role of involvement in the persuasion–attitude relationship in the social media context should be examined.

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Chen-Yueh Chen, Department of Recreation and Leisure Industry Management, National Taiwan Sport University, No. 250, Wenhua 1st Rd., Guishan District, Taoyuan, 333, Taiwan. Email: [email protected]