The moderating influence of celebrity endorsement on intention to engage in infection prevention behaviours

Although the use of celebrities for communication within social marketing to influence voluntary behaviour change has received significant attention, its application to promote infection preventive behaviours, such as frequent handwashing with soap, has received limited attention. Using the health belief model (HBM), the study examined the moderating effect of celebrity endorsement (CE) on the relationship between the predictors of HBM such as perceived severity, susceptibility, benefits, barriers, self-efficacy and target audiences’ intention to avoid handshaking, frequently wash hands with soap and cover mouth with an elbow when coughing. Data from 562 respondents were analysed using PLS-SEM. The result shows that CE significantly moderate the relationship between target audiences’ perception of severity, susceptibility, self-efficacy and cues to action and intention to perform the recommended infection preventive behaviours.Thus, when a celebrity is employed as a conduit for delivering a social marketing message, particularly about infection preventive behaviour, target audiences are more likely to take action to perform the recommended behaviour. Theoretically, the study shows that although the HBM has been extensively applied to explain health-related behaviours, using celebrities to endorse the various constructs of the HBM significantly enhances the predictive ability of the model.