•  
  •  
 

Keywords

Source credibility, Theory of planned behavior, Cattle production, Online videos, Video training

Abstract

Escherichia Coli (E. Coli) contamination has been a long-existing concern for the cattle production industry, often causing negative public health and economic consequences. The existence of pre-harvest practices that reduce E. coli contamination creates the opportunity to support human health by modifying behaviors in cattle production through educational communication. It is vital to consider how communication can be modified to persuade the audience. This study examined the effects of having different sources, such as a veterinarian or cattle producer, present the message in a training video. An experimental design was used to examine how the source is identified relates to the source’s perceived credibility, as well as concepts related to the theory of planned behavior. A link to a video and an online questionnaire were distributed to cattle producers through the weekly news e-mail distributed by several industry organizations. The analysis of 106 questionnaires found that no matter how a presenter was described in the video there was no difference in the perceived credibility of the presenter. Also, no matter how the source was identified there was no difference in the variables related to the theory of planned behavior. In addition, this study found that no matter how the source was labeled, higher perceived credibility correlated with more positive attitudes, perceived norms, perceived behavior control and intention to adopt the suggested behaviors. This pattern provides evidence for credibility’s relationship with possible behavior adoption, indicating that credibility of the source is an important consideration when message designers are constructing training videos.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Download

Share

COinS