A FIELD EXPERIMENT TO TEST THE APPLICABILITY OF INVOLVEMENT THEORY TO THE SEGMENTATION OF MARKETS FOR SOCIAL GOODS

Involvement has been proposed as an important moderating variable in determining the effectiveness of social marketing programs. The research described in this dissertation is a field experiment designed to provide an empirical test of the applicability of involvement theory to social marketing situations. The issues addressed are the usefulness of involvement as a segmentation basis and susceptibility of each involvement segment to attitudinal and behavioral change.;The context used for the research was the case of non industrial private forest (NIPF) landowners and the interest of the federal government in inducing these owners to include timber production as one of their ownership objectives. The objective is to insure the continuing availability of timber at reasonable prices.;The experiment involved the creation of an actual social marketing program wherein NIPF owners were exposed to an advertising campaign via either direct mail, newspaper or radio. Length of campaign was varied from one to four weeks. The subjects were offered two behavioral responses; a leaflet about forest management and/or a free visit from a state forester who would help them develop a forest management plan.;Following exposure of the campaign each owner received a mailed survey which contained questions on his ownership goals, his past experience with timber management, his attitudes and intentions towards timber management, an index of enduring involvement and an opinion leadership index.;Based on Houston and Rothschild's construct of enduring involvement (EI), respondents to the questionnaire were segmented by level of enduring involvement. It was hypothesised that based on comparison with controls, low EI owners would show favorable attitudinal and intentional change and that this would increase directly with length of campaign. High EI owners would show no attitudinal or intentional change but would be more responsive behaviorally.;148 owners responded to the advertising. Response to the advertising was highest for direct mail followed by newspaper and radio. Analysis of the data from the 1860 returned questionnaires indicated no attitudinal or intentional shift in any EI segment and that the response to the ads came primarily from high EI owners who had previously existing favorable attitudes towards timber management. These respondents also tended to be opinion leaders which suggests that they act as vectors of information to less involved owners.