| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 社會教育學系 === 104 === The use of sexy female models to promote policy is prevalent in Taiwan, often even though the policy being promoted has no relation to sex or sexuality. The use of sex in advertisement has generally been considered effective, but in the public sector its effects remained unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine if using sexually oriented appeals in policy news could affect attitude towards the news, the particular policy, and the government itself. Four experiments were conducted where university student participants filled out questionnaires featuring policy news, rewritten from real news, to fit experimental purposes. In the first experiment, two print news reports were used, one with sexual referents: an article that reads sexual adjectives describing a picture of sexy female models, and the other without sexual appeal. The findings indicate that news report without sexual appeal received relatively positive effectiveness. A number of factors were then added to ensuing experiments, including gender of participants, the policy being promoted, and participant’s sexual attitudes. Results showed that policy’s relation to sex did not affect effectiveness, nor did sexual attitudes, but gender does serve as a moderator. For female participants, sexy news generated a more negative attitude than did non-sexual news, while for male participants, there was no difference between attitudes toward the two reports. On the basis of these findings, advice for Taiwanese government’s marketing strategy is offered, as are suggestions for future studies.
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