The Last Chance Dance: The Interplay of Scarcity and Social Proof in Social Media Contest Messaging

This study examined the interaction effects of message framing and descriptive norms on attitudes toward social media contests, brands, and participation intentions. This study also investigated the moderating role of brand involvement and social media contest engagement on the frames–norms interaction effects on participation intentions. A 2 (message framing: gain or loss) × 2 (descriptive norm: not-yet-popular or popular) between-subjects experimental study was conducted to test the hypotheses. The findings showed that gain-framed versus loss-framed messages led to more positive outcomes when the social media contest was not normative (i.e., not-yet-popular norm), while loss-framed versus gain-framed messages generated more favorable responses when the contest was normative (i.e., popular norm). However, brand involvement and social media engagement overrode this interaction on participation intentions. The findings are discussed considering social psychology theories, such as the principle of scarcity and social proof, prospect theory, optimal distinctiveness theory, and heuristic information processing. Practical implications are advanced for the strategic use of messaging in social media contests.