From Fear to Care: Designing Supportive and Privacy-Conscious Health Advertising

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-598-5_18How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Digital health advertising; Supportive framing; Fear appeals; Psychological safety; Empathetic language; Privacy-preserving personalization; Low-intrusion design

Abstract

Digital health advertising is increasingly pervasive, yet its psychological and ethical implications are often overlooked. While existing research underscores these risks, little evidence explores how the combination of positive, supportive messaging and privacy-conscious personalization might enhance user experience and mitigate adverse effects. This study investigates whether reframing health-related ads with positive, supportive language can reduce anxiety and improve perceived comfort, support, and psychological safety, while meeting privacy expectations. Using a mixed-methods design, I conducted a baseline survey (N=118), a randomized controlled experiment (N=150) comparing fear-based versus supportive ads. Results show that supportive ads significantly reduced post-exposure anxiety and increased comfort, perceived support, and psychological safety compared to fear-based appeals. These findings suggest that well-being-oriented, privacy-preserving advertising can not only reduce anxiety but also enhance user engagement without sacrificing relevance, providing actionable guidance for the ethical design of digital health communication.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Kuoyan Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - From Fear to Care: Designing Supportive and Privacy-Conscious Health Advertising
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 6th  International Conference on Big Data and Social Sciences (ICBDSS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 167
EP  - 180
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-598-5_18
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-598-5_18
ID  - Zhang2026
ER  -