The effect of humorous advertisement is still an issue of controversy and level of involvement may be the most important mediating variable, According to "the elaboration likelihood model (ELM)" (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), many variables influencing attitude differ between high and low involvement subjects. Celsi & Olson (1988) suggested that research should consider both "situational sources of personal relevance (SSPR)" and "intrinsic sources of personal relevance (ISPR)" when studying the issue of involvement. Previous research tended to focus mostly on the latter but ignored the former. Therefore, the present study investigates the different persuasive effects of humorous advertisement in different situations.The experiment adopted a 2×2×2 three factorial design. The independent variables were: product (high vs. low involvement products: computer vs. soft drink), advertisement appeal (ordinary vs. humorous advertisement) and situational involvement (high vs. low situation involvement: with or without promotional activity).
Results indicated that for high involvement products, such as computers, ordinary, non-humorous advertisement was more effective. But for low involvement products, such as milk tea, humorous advertisements were more persuasive. The manipulation of situational involvement in this study was not very successful, so the effect of situational involvement is still unclear and needs to be studied further.
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