This paper, utilising data from the World Values Survey, presents a pioneering examination of cit... more This paper, utilising data from the World Values Survey, presents a pioneering examination of citizens’ confidence in political parties in mainland China spanning a twenty-eight-year period, juxtaposed with global counterparts. The analysis unveils a consistent strengthening of confidence among mainland Chinese citizens in political parties, essentially the Chinese Communist Party, from 1990 to 2018, with a marginal decline around 2012. This heightened confidence secures a noteworthy second-place ranking globally. It exhibits a positive correlation with confidence in government, parliament, civil service, armed forces, police, courts, and the press. Additionally, it aligns positively with perceptions of politics as important in life, national pride, age, trust in people of different religions, willingness to have neighbours of different races, and a sense of a secure neighbourhood. Conversely, it demonstrates a negative association with postmaterialism, educational attainment, support for greater income differences as incentives for economic development, and reliance on TV news for understanding current events.
Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Jul 6, 2021
PurposeThis study aims to apply and test the effectiveness of message sidedness and conclusivenes... more PurposeThis study aims to apply and test the effectiveness of message sidedness and conclusiveness in Google Ads advertising.Design/methodology/approachFour field experiments on Google Ad campaigns were conducted on the topics of energy and environment, the water–energy–food nexus, and a Higher-Ed program (at the national and local levels).FindingsTwo-sided search engine advertisements are more effective than one-sided advertisements in national campaigns but less effective in local campaigns. In national campaigns, conclusive search engine advertisements are more effective in increasing impressions and clicks, but inconclusive advertisements are more effective in increasing the click-through rate (CTR); in local campaigns, inconclusive advertisements are more effective when being one-sided, while conclusive advertisements are more effective when being two-sided. Overall, the two-sided and inconclusive advertisement generates the best results in a national campaign, but the one-sided and inconclusive advertisement generates the best results in a local campaign.Originality/valueAs the first to test sidedness and conclusiveness with Google Ads advertising, the paper provides theoretical and practical suggestions to search engine marketers by identifying the effective copywriting strategies, moderating factors and more measurements of effectiveness.
Based on the data reported in a published article, this study finds that the percentages of artic... more Based on the data reported in a published article, this study finds that the percentages of articles that have particular frames in Sierra Club newsletters correlate with those in national and regional newspapers. Partial correlation analysis also reports such a correlation between the national newspapers and the regional newspapers, which disappears when the Sierra Club newsletters are controlled. Moreover, the correlation between the newsletters and the newspapers exists when the pro-environment master frames are analyzed, but not when the pro-development competing frames are analyzed.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, Jul 8, 2023
obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal ... more obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal University and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of South Carolina. His research interest lies in examining the persuasive effects of mass, digital, and social media, focusing on science and health issues. He has published in such journals as
Journal of international business research, Apr 1, 2014
ABSTRACTAs the name correctly implies, global warming is a significant issue affecting the entire... more ABSTRACTAs the name correctly implies, global warming is a significant issue affecting the entire world. The world's scientific community has largely reached a consensus that (1) global warming is occurring and (2) that human behavior is largely responsible. The most recent evidence is seen in an August 20, 2013, New York Times report of a leaked draft of an upcoming UN Report on climate change (Gillis, 2013). That report, prepared by an international panel of scientists unequivocally indicates that human activity caused more than half of observed increase in the average of global surface temperature in the last half of the 20th century.While the international scientific community is largely united on the presence and causes of climate change, the political debate is far from resolved. Some political leaders deny the existence of global warming and any human culpability, claiming that we are just in a "weather cycle." With political leaders questioning both the existence and cause of climate change, it is not surprising that there are differing positions by the public on the issue as well.Although scholars have examined a number of individual factors related to U. S. environmental attitudes, perhaps the two most reliable indicators are gender and political ideology. Since the U.S and China are the world's two largest economies, arguably, they are the two largest contributors to the problem. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the impact of gender and political ideology on U.S and Chinese college student's responses to advertisements which advocate actions to reduce climate change.The study employed a total sample of 318 college students, 162 from China and 156 from the U.S. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in Chinese and U.S. college student responses to ads which advocated action on climate change based on their gender and political ideology. The results indicate that in the U.S, liberals are both more likely to agree with the existence of climate change and indicate a personal intention to do something about it than are conservatives. However, in contrast to previous research, in the U.S. this study failed to find a sex difference in environmental attitudes. In China, the results indicate that males are more likely to agree with the existence of climate change and indicate a personal intention to do something about it than are females. Ideological differences along the liberal-conservative dimension were not evident in the Chinese sample. These findings have important potential implications in the area of "green" marketing and "green" advertising.INTRODUCTIONAs the name correctly implies, global warming, or now the more commonly used term, climate change, is a significant issue affecting the entire world. The world's scientific community has largely reached a consensus that (1) global warming is occurring and (2) that human behavior is largely responsible. The most recent evidence is seen in an August 20, 2013, New York Times report of a leaked draft of an upcoming UN Report on climate change (Gillis, 2013). The report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international panel of scientists who along with A1 Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, unequivocally indicates that human activity caused more than half of observed increase in the average of global surface temperature in the last half of the 20th century.While the international scientific community is largely united on the presence and causes of climate change, in the United States, the political debate is far from resolved. Some political leaders deny the existence of global warming and any human culpability, offering the contrarian argument that we are just in a "weather cycle." With political leaders questioning both the existence and cause of climate change, there should be no surprise that there are differing positions by the public on the issue as well (Zhao, Leiserowitz, Maibach and Roser-Renouf, 2011). …
While most research on digital ethics has focused on professional codes or case studies in manipu... more While most research on digital ethics has focused on professional codes or case studies in manipulation, there has been little formal research on what the readers thinks about what is and what is not visually ethical in a digital age. This study examines what affect young readers' acceptance or rejection of digital alteration of news images. The major finding is that the perceived prevalence of photo alteration, media credibility, and personal Photoshop use and knowledge are the major influencers of "non-professional" standards of acceptance of photo alteration. The study implies the necessity of intervention from scholars, media professionals, and ethical activists to discuss photo alteration and advocate ethical standards for it.
Journal of international crisis and risk communication research, 2018
Message sidedness, including its later format inoculation, and conclusion explicitness have been ... more Message sidedness, including its later format inoculation, and conclusion explicitness have been identifi ed by researchers as two prominent message factors that may infl uence advocating eff ects. Two-sided messages, which contain both supporting and opposing information about the issue, particularly those containing inoculation components that refute the negative side, are found to be more eff ective than one-sided messages. Messages with explicit conclusions are also found to be more persuasive than those that let the audience draw the conclusions themselves. This study tested the persuasion eff ectiveness of message inoculation and conclusion explicitness on a new scientifi c concept, the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, of which the public has little knowledge. This study used fi ve randomly assigned groups (total N = 524) and found that messages with explicit conclusions are more persuasive than those with implicit conclusions; however, it found no diff erence between the eff ectiveness of one-sided messages and of refutational two-sided messages. The study suggests that a clear conclusion is necessary to communicate the WEF nexus for a better approach to managing the megacrisis of water, energy, and food security.
Using data on environmental issues drawn from 41 series of poll questions and federal outlay in 4... more Using data on environmental issues drawn from 41 series of poll questions and federal outlay in 43 years (1965-2007) and a content analysis of newspaper articles, television news summaries, and presidential documents in 28 years (1980-2007), with the multivariate Granger Causality test based on Vector Autoregression (VAR) models and bivariate Granger Causality (F and Chi-squire) tests, the study finds that public opinion has little influences on federal environmental expenditure in the past several decades. It also finds that for the presidents, the media, and the public, their agendas (volume of information) cause a change in their attitudes (tone toward the environment) and that the casualties in the agenda and frame building and setting processes are essentially confirmed by the multivariate test, but feedback influences are also identified through the bivariate tests. The multivariate test also shows an influence from the presidential agenda to the public agenda on environmental issues, with no influence identified the other way around. The implications of the proposed five-level integrated model of media effects are also discussed.
obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal ... more obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal University and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of South Carolina. His research interest lies in examining the persuasive effects of mass, digital, and social media, focusing on science and health issues. He has published in such journals as
Integrative Psychology and Behavioral Science, 2023
obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal Universi... more obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal University and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of South Carolina. His research interest lies in examining the persuasive effects of mass, digital, and social media, focusing on science and health issues. He has published in such journals as
Environmental issues need public support to be solved. But the theoretical model that supports pr... more Environmental issues need public support to be solved. But the theoretical model that supports providing the public scientific information to enhance their support to scientific issues, the deficit model, is confirmed in some studies but disapproved in others. Hypothesizing that the difference lies partially in the topic of issues used in those studies, this study tests the deficit model (and the expanded linkage from knowledge to attitude to behavioral intention in the hierarchy of response model) with the complex issues of climate change (N = 379), which is entangled with political and ideological confounders, and the new water-energy-food (WEF) nexus (N = 524), which is involved with few confounders. The survey on climate change, a hotly debated issue deeply entangled with many social, economic, and political factors, revealed a substantial positive correlation between attitude and behavioral intention and no correlation between knowledge and attitude or behavioral intention, producing no evidence to support the deficit model and partial evidence to support the hierarchy of response model. The partial correlation analysis of this data, controlling age, gender, and ideology, also identified a negative relationship between knowledge and behavioral intention, further calling researchers’ attention to the influence of the complexness of the scientific event on public information processing. The survey on the WEF nexus, a new scientific approach that systematically governs water, energy, and food as a nexus, showed positive correlations of knowledge with attitude and of attitude with behavioral intention, confirming the deficit model as well as the traditional response hierarchy model. The study suggests that when confounding variables do not intervene, the deficit model and the traditional response model hold to guide science communication projects and garner public support for science and the environment.
This study (N = 311) tested the popular media psychology theory third-person perception in the co... more This study (N = 311) tested the popular media psychology theory third-person perception in the context of a gubernatorial election. The study found a substantial negative linear correlation of the difference in perceived media influences on the self and on others with the message desirability (measured by individual perception of the message), which explains 37.5% of the variation of the third-person perception. The social distance corollary is tested in different dimensions. But only along the dimension of generality and when the stimulus is perceived undesirable a strong linear relationship between social distance and the difference in perceived influences is found. The third- or first-person perceptions that are shown when social distance is conceptualized in the dimensions of gender and ethnicity are not consistent with the theoretical expectations. Supporters of one candidate tend to think that people with no choice yet, rather than supporters of the other candidate, will be mostly influenced by the message. No evidence supports a relationship between the perceived media influences and the real media influences
This paper, utilising data from the World Values Survey, presents a pioneering examination of cit... more This paper, utilising data from the World Values Survey, presents a pioneering examination of citizens’ confidence in political parties in mainland China spanning a twenty-eight-year period, juxtaposed with global counterparts. The analysis unveils a consistent strengthening of confidence among mainland Chinese citizens in political parties, essentially the Chinese Communist Party, from 1990 to 2018, with a marginal decline around 2012. This heightened confidence secures a noteworthy second-place ranking globally. It exhibits a positive correlation with confidence in government, parliament, civil service, armed forces, police, courts, and the press. Additionally, it aligns positively with perceptions of politics as important in life, national pride, age, trust in people of different religions, willingness to have neighbours of different races, and a sense of a secure neighbourhood. Conversely, it demonstrates a negative association with postmaterialism, educational attainment, support for greater income differences as incentives for economic development, and reliance on TV news for understanding current events.
Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Jul 6, 2021
PurposeThis study aims to apply and test the effectiveness of message sidedness and conclusivenes... more PurposeThis study aims to apply and test the effectiveness of message sidedness and conclusiveness in Google Ads advertising.Design/methodology/approachFour field experiments on Google Ad campaigns were conducted on the topics of energy and environment, the water–energy–food nexus, and a Higher-Ed program (at the national and local levels).FindingsTwo-sided search engine advertisements are more effective than one-sided advertisements in national campaigns but less effective in local campaigns. In national campaigns, conclusive search engine advertisements are more effective in increasing impressions and clicks, but inconclusive advertisements are more effective in increasing the click-through rate (CTR); in local campaigns, inconclusive advertisements are more effective when being one-sided, while conclusive advertisements are more effective when being two-sided. Overall, the two-sided and inconclusive advertisement generates the best results in a national campaign, but the one-sided and inconclusive advertisement generates the best results in a local campaign.Originality/valueAs the first to test sidedness and conclusiveness with Google Ads advertising, the paper provides theoretical and practical suggestions to search engine marketers by identifying the effective copywriting strategies, moderating factors and more measurements of effectiveness.
Based on the data reported in a published article, this study finds that the percentages of artic... more Based on the data reported in a published article, this study finds that the percentages of articles that have particular frames in Sierra Club newsletters correlate with those in national and regional newspapers. Partial correlation analysis also reports such a correlation between the national newspapers and the regional newspapers, which disappears when the Sierra Club newsletters are controlled. Moreover, the correlation between the newsletters and the newspapers exists when the pro-environment master frames are analyzed, but not when the pro-development competing frames are analyzed.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, Jul 8, 2023
obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal ... more obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal University and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of South Carolina. His research interest lies in examining the persuasive effects of mass, digital, and social media, focusing on science and health issues. He has published in such journals as
Journal of international business research, Apr 1, 2014
ABSTRACTAs the name correctly implies, global warming is a significant issue affecting the entire... more ABSTRACTAs the name correctly implies, global warming is a significant issue affecting the entire world. The world's scientific community has largely reached a consensus that (1) global warming is occurring and (2) that human behavior is largely responsible. The most recent evidence is seen in an August 20, 2013, New York Times report of a leaked draft of an upcoming UN Report on climate change (Gillis, 2013). That report, prepared by an international panel of scientists unequivocally indicates that human activity caused more than half of observed increase in the average of global surface temperature in the last half of the 20th century.While the international scientific community is largely united on the presence and causes of climate change, the political debate is far from resolved. Some political leaders deny the existence of global warming and any human culpability, claiming that we are just in a "weather cycle." With political leaders questioning both the existence and cause of climate change, it is not surprising that there are differing positions by the public on the issue as well.Although scholars have examined a number of individual factors related to U. S. environmental attitudes, perhaps the two most reliable indicators are gender and political ideology. Since the U.S and China are the world's two largest economies, arguably, they are the two largest contributors to the problem. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the impact of gender and political ideology on U.S and Chinese college student's responses to advertisements which advocate actions to reduce climate change.The study employed a total sample of 318 college students, 162 from China and 156 from the U.S. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in Chinese and U.S. college student responses to ads which advocated action on climate change based on their gender and political ideology. The results indicate that in the U.S, liberals are both more likely to agree with the existence of climate change and indicate a personal intention to do something about it than are conservatives. However, in contrast to previous research, in the U.S. this study failed to find a sex difference in environmental attitudes. In China, the results indicate that males are more likely to agree with the existence of climate change and indicate a personal intention to do something about it than are females. Ideological differences along the liberal-conservative dimension were not evident in the Chinese sample. These findings have important potential implications in the area of "green" marketing and "green" advertising.INTRODUCTIONAs the name correctly implies, global warming, or now the more commonly used term, climate change, is a significant issue affecting the entire world. The world's scientific community has largely reached a consensus that (1) global warming is occurring and (2) that human behavior is largely responsible. The most recent evidence is seen in an August 20, 2013, New York Times report of a leaked draft of an upcoming UN Report on climate change (Gillis, 2013). The report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international panel of scientists who along with A1 Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, unequivocally indicates that human activity caused more than half of observed increase in the average of global surface temperature in the last half of the 20th century.While the international scientific community is largely united on the presence and causes of climate change, in the United States, the political debate is far from resolved. Some political leaders deny the existence of global warming and any human culpability, offering the contrarian argument that we are just in a "weather cycle." With political leaders questioning both the existence and cause of climate change, there should be no surprise that there are differing positions by the public on the issue as well (Zhao, Leiserowitz, Maibach and Roser-Renouf, 2011). …
While most research on digital ethics has focused on professional codes or case studies in manipu... more While most research on digital ethics has focused on professional codes or case studies in manipulation, there has been little formal research on what the readers thinks about what is and what is not visually ethical in a digital age. This study examines what affect young readers' acceptance or rejection of digital alteration of news images. The major finding is that the perceived prevalence of photo alteration, media credibility, and personal Photoshop use and knowledge are the major influencers of "non-professional" standards of acceptance of photo alteration. The study implies the necessity of intervention from scholars, media professionals, and ethical activists to discuss photo alteration and advocate ethical standards for it.
Journal of international crisis and risk communication research, 2018
Message sidedness, including its later format inoculation, and conclusion explicitness have been ... more Message sidedness, including its later format inoculation, and conclusion explicitness have been identifi ed by researchers as two prominent message factors that may infl uence advocating eff ects. Two-sided messages, which contain both supporting and opposing information about the issue, particularly those containing inoculation components that refute the negative side, are found to be more eff ective than one-sided messages. Messages with explicit conclusions are also found to be more persuasive than those that let the audience draw the conclusions themselves. This study tested the persuasion eff ectiveness of message inoculation and conclusion explicitness on a new scientifi c concept, the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, of which the public has little knowledge. This study used fi ve randomly assigned groups (total N = 524) and found that messages with explicit conclusions are more persuasive than those with implicit conclusions; however, it found no diff erence between the eff ectiveness of one-sided messages and of refutational two-sided messages. The study suggests that a clear conclusion is necessary to communicate the WEF nexus for a better approach to managing the megacrisis of water, energy, and food security.
Using data on environmental issues drawn from 41 series of poll questions and federal outlay in 4... more Using data on environmental issues drawn from 41 series of poll questions and federal outlay in 43 years (1965-2007) and a content analysis of newspaper articles, television news summaries, and presidential documents in 28 years (1980-2007), with the multivariate Granger Causality test based on Vector Autoregression (VAR) models and bivariate Granger Causality (F and Chi-squire) tests, the study finds that public opinion has little influences on federal environmental expenditure in the past several decades. It also finds that for the presidents, the media, and the public, their agendas (volume of information) cause a change in their attitudes (tone toward the environment) and that the casualties in the agenda and frame building and setting processes are essentially confirmed by the multivariate test, but feedback influences are also identified through the bivariate tests. The multivariate test also shows an influence from the presidential agenda to the public agenda on environmental issues, with no influence identified the other way around. The implications of the proposed five-level integrated model of media effects are also discussed.
obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal ... more obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal University and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of South Carolina. His research interest lies in examining the persuasive effects of mass, digital, and social media, focusing on science and health issues. He has published in such journals as
Integrative Psychology and Behavioral Science, 2023
obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal Universi... more obtained his master's degree in philosophy with a specialty in logic from Beijing Normal University and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of South Carolina. His research interest lies in examining the persuasive effects of mass, digital, and social media, focusing on science and health issues. He has published in such journals as
Environmental issues need public support to be solved. But the theoretical model that supports pr... more Environmental issues need public support to be solved. But the theoretical model that supports providing the public scientific information to enhance their support to scientific issues, the deficit model, is confirmed in some studies but disapproved in others. Hypothesizing that the difference lies partially in the topic of issues used in those studies, this study tests the deficit model (and the expanded linkage from knowledge to attitude to behavioral intention in the hierarchy of response model) with the complex issues of climate change (N = 379), which is entangled with political and ideological confounders, and the new water-energy-food (WEF) nexus (N = 524), which is involved with few confounders. The survey on climate change, a hotly debated issue deeply entangled with many social, economic, and political factors, revealed a substantial positive correlation between attitude and behavioral intention and no correlation between knowledge and attitude or behavioral intention, producing no evidence to support the deficit model and partial evidence to support the hierarchy of response model. The partial correlation analysis of this data, controlling age, gender, and ideology, also identified a negative relationship between knowledge and behavioral intention, further calling researchers’ attention to the influence of the complexness of the scientific event on public information processing. The survey on the WEF nexus, a new scientific approach that systematically governs water, energy, and food as a nexus, showed positive correlations of knowledge with attitude and of attitude with behavioral intention, confirming the deficit model as well as the traditional response hierarchy model. The study suggests that when confounding variables do not intervene, the deficit model and the traditional response model hold to guide science communication projects and garner public support for science and the environment.
This study (N = 311) tested the popular media psychology theory third-person perception in the co... more This study (N = 311) tested the popular media psychology theory third-person perception in the context of a gubernatorial election. The study found a substantial negative linear correlation of the difference in perceived media influences on the self and on others with the message desirability (measured by individual perception of the message), which explains 37.5% of the variation of the third-person perception. The social distance corollary is tested in different dimensions. But only along the dimension of generality and when the stimulus is perceived undesirable a strong linear relationship between social distance and the difference in perceived influences is found. The third- or first-person perceptions that are shown when social distance is conceptualized in the dimensions of gender and ethnicity are not consistent with the theoretical expectations. Supporters of one candidate tend to think that people with no choice yet, rather than supporters of the other candidate, will be mostly influenced by the message. No evidence supports a relationship between the perceived media influences and the real media influences
Engaging Social Media in China Platforms, Publics, and Production US–China Relations in the Age of Globalization, 2021
The chapter analyzed the posting techniques that China news media used on Facebook and Twitter an... more The chapter analyzed the posting techniques that China news media used on Facebook and Twitter and discussed the implications of those posting.
This study explores the dynamics among the media, the public and the presidents on the environmen... more This study explores the dynamics among the media, the public and the presidents on the environment, an increasingly prominent topic in post-industrial societies, in a longitudinal context in the U.S. society. Based on a newly proposed media effects model that integrates agenda-setting, priming, and framing, this study uses data from dozens of poll questions on and federal outlay for the environment in 43 years (1965-2007), and content analysis of newspaper articles, television news program summaries and presidential documents in 28 years (112 quarters, from 1980 to 2007). The study finds evidence to support the agenda-setting and framing theories, which hold that the media are influenced by the social establishment while influencing the public. It also finds that the media are influenced by the public and that the media influence the presidents. The study also supports the idea that media effects should be analyzed at different levels, as proposed in the integrated mass communications process model. Finally, the presidents and their policies on the environment are found unresponsive to public opinion.
Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication, 2010
The entry surveys the development and issues in science communication in Greater China, Japan, an... more The entry surveys the development and issues in science communication in Greater China, Japan, and South Korea.
The book chapter examines presidential addresses on the environment from the 1970s up to Presiden... more The book chapter examines presidential addresses on the environment from the 1970s up to President George W. Bush, and identify a double-track pattern and downturn trend.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS AND RISK COMMUNICATION CONFERENCE, 2021
These Identifying the traditional principle of medical ethics of autonomy as a major factor that ... more These Identifying the traditional principle of medical ethics of autonomy as a major factor that hinders epidemiological investigation and the understanding of a novel virus, this study adopts an ethical framework, consisting of the axes of ethical devotions (local, national, continental, and global) and ethical reasoning approaches (deontological and teleological), to analyze the approaches of communicating global public health crises like the COVID pandemic. The argument is made to endorse a global devotion with teleological reasoning in a large-scale public health crisis that needs global collaboration to cope with.
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Papers by Q. J. Yao