Comparative Study on Negative Political Advertisements with Specific Focus on Attack and Rebuttal Television Campaigns from Indian Perspective

Abstract

Nowadays, in Indian political system, it is common for the political parties to use the negative political advertisements to denigrate the opponent political party. Normally, such attacks are responded with the use of similar media either by retaliating or with putting fresh charges on the attacker. In this article, an experiment has been conducted in an Indian state ‘Gujarat’ to compare the effect of attack and rebuttal types of political television campaigns. After considering the literature pertaining to negative political advertisement, this research addresses four related issues. The first and second objectives of this study are to compare the effect of attack and rebuttal type of advertisements on attitude towards advertisement and political party subsequently. The third objective is to compare attack and rebuttal type of advertisements on the basis of intrusiveness effect. The final objective is to compare impact of both types of negative advertisements on intention to vote for sponsoring political party. The results indicate that the ‘attack advertisements’ prove effective in changing the attitude of citizens and intention to vote. The results of the study have practical implications for practitioners of political advertising and consultants of political campaigns. It will help them to create a link between voters’ attitudinal responses and creation of effective campaign strategies.

Keywords

Negative political advertisement attack advertisement rebuttal advertisement

Introduction

From the beginning of the democratic system, it is common for political parties and candidates to use rallies, political advertising and speeches to woo the voters. Developments in media and technology have compelled the political parties to believe that political advertisements have an edge over most of the other mediums. Therefore, since several elections the importance of political advertising, especially on television, has increased. This has resulted in increase in advertising budget of political parties. Sabato (1981) observed that every third commercial was attacking and half of them were negative in matter.

Different terminologies are used to define ‘negative’ in literature. According to Pinkleton (1997), for some authors, use of disappointing vocabulary for an opponent is ‘negative’, while others believe that the negative advertisements are divided into three parts, namely negative ad, attack ad and negative comparison ad. According to some authors, only those comparative advertisements which condense the opponent to boost the sponsor are considered negative (Merritt, 1984), while comparative advertisements are part of negative advertisements (Johnson-Cartee & Copeland, 1989; Pinkleton, 1997).

Generally, it is the emphasis of an advertisement which differentiates negative advertisements. The advertisements which are based on condemn of the opponent are negative, while advertisements based on good character of the sponsor are positive (Kaid & Johnston, 1991). Although an exact definition is not agreed upon, generally, a negative political advertisement directly attacks its target, pointing out the broken promises of the target, voting record inadequacies or denigrating the target’s personal characteristics or traits (Johnson-Cartee & Copeland, 1989; Merritt, 1984; Pinkleton, 1997). This type of advertising is referred as ‘mudslinging’ (Garramone, 1984; Stewart, 1975).

Effect of Negative Political Advertisement

From the last three decades, the growth of negative advertisements has attracted researchers. The attempts have been made to find its impact on conative, affective and cognitive response of the target (Tinkham & Weaver-Lariscy, 1993). However, most of the outcomes of such studies are contradictory. Some of the researchers believe that there is a rebounding effect on the sponsor, while others are in favour of the use of negative advertising. According to Basil, Schooler and Reeves (1991), the rebounding character of negative political advertising is that the output is rated as ‘effective’ because the message is recalled, but ‘ineffective’ because it harms the image of sponsoring candidates. Contradictory to this, it was also concluded that the negative and positive advertisements have different outputs. The positive advertisement is used to build the image of sponsoring candidate while the negative advertisement is used to destroy the image of the opponent (Weigold, 1992).

In a meta-analysis study, Lau, Sigelman, Caroline and Babbitt (1999) found that people like negative ads less than positive ads. However, some of the research proves the usefulness of negative political advertising. Surlin and Gordon (1977) concluded that despite being questioned on ethical ground, negative political advertisements were believed to be more informative than positive version of the advertisements. Compared to positive information, negative information is considered more influential in candidate evaluations (Lau, 1982). A more recent study conducted by Lau and Pomper (2002) found that for incumbents positive campaigning is relatively effective, while for challengers, negative campaigning is more effective. Apart from this, some studies prove that compared to positive information negative information is considered more credible (Hamilton & Zanna, 1972; Leventhal & Singer, 1964).

Normally, negative things are more attractive than positive because of their effect on our emotions. According to Sabato (1981), negative political advertisements gain more attention and are also better memorized (Lang, 1991). They draw out the negative attitude from those for whom they are misleading (Garramone, 1984), biased (Johnson-Cartee & Copeland, 1989), ethically wrong (Surlin & Gordon, 1977) and disgusting (Merritt, 1984). Though some of the viewers believe that it is disgusting, it can be effective (Pinkleton, Um, & Austin, 2002). Despite being risky for the sponsor (Hill, 1989; Kaid & Boydston, 1987; Merritt, 1984; Pinkleton et al., 2002), it has been proved that a perfectly developed negative campaign can reduce the effect of the opponent’s attack and have a small effect on the sponsor (Pinkleton, 1997, 1998). Past experiments also draw the conclusion that negative advertisements drive away the voters from the polls, especially those whose interest is least in voting. Additionally, compared to positive advertisement, negative advertisements are more detrimental on voting intentions (Marcus, Neuman, & Mackuen, 2000). So, it has been proved that the negative political ads have an effect on variables across the hierarchy of effects.

Contradictory to this, some of the studies prove that the negative political advertisements are not only worthless but their outcome may turn into a backlash effect on the sponsor (Garramone, 1984; Merritt, 1984; Roddy & Garramone, 1988). Some conclude that it has a small impact on evaluation of targeted candidate, but generates negative impact on the sponsor (Hill, 1989). Though the evidences on backlash effect are mixed, Pinkleton (1997) concluded that the sponsor could be benefited if a moderately negative ad was chosen. A backlash effect was also based on the target candidate’s reaction to the advertisement (Roddy & Garramone, 1988). On the other side, Weigold (1992) concluded that little evidence was found for any kind of boomerang effect. Political consultants are observed to be indifferent with this outcome of academic research for backlash effect (Sabato, 1981).

Negative Political Advertisement and Candidate Evaluation

It is well known that the exposure to political advertising affects candidates’ evaluation (Garramone, 1984; Garramone & Smith, 1984; Haddock & Zanna, 1997; Kaid & Boydston, 1987; Kaid & Chanslor, 1995; Pinkleton, 1997; Shapiro & Rieger, 1992).

After exposure of negative advertisement, the viewers rated the candidate as unqualified, dishonest, not sincere, unsuccessful and irresponsible (Kaid & Boydston, 1987). In addition, research shows that it is more detrimental to target a candidate than a sponsor candidate among the voters exposed to negative advertisement (Shapiro & Rieger, 1992). Contradictory to this, Hill (1989) concluded that the sponsor is in disadvantaged position in terms of liking if the advertisement is negative, while he is in advantage in terms of liking if the advertisement is positive.

In a study that exposed participants to negative comparative political advertising, Pinkleton (1997) investigated the effects of such advertisements on candidate evaluations. The outcome indicates that the comparative stimulus including the major negative information generates significantly major negative change in the evaluation of the target than any other stimulus (i.e., low and moderate negative information). As audience weighs positive information less than negative information, negative advertisement is more impressive than positive or neutral advertisement despite the fact that it generates negative impression for the candidate (Pinkleton, 1997). Some psychological studies conclude that people weigh negative information more than positive in the assessment of likability, formation of impression and decision making based on judgement (Fiske, 1980; Hamilton & Huffman, 1971; Hamilton & Zanna, 1972). With this, the negative information is also considered more significant in behaviour and perception based on political assessment (Lau, 1982).

The results of studies discussed earlier are divergent. Some outputs indicate that exposure to negative political advertising either reduces the evaluation of the sponsor of the ad or lowers evaluation of the target of the ad. With respect to lowering evaluations of the sponsor of the ad, research has identified this effect as a backlash effect or boomerang effect (Garramone, 1984; Merritt, 1984). In other words, unintended effects are generated towards the sponsor of the ad instead of intended effects towards the target of the ad. Although some of these studies have shown that negative political advertising produces backlash effects towards the sponsor of the ad, researchers have identified that third-party or independent sponsorship of political ads can alleviate these unintended effects (Garramone, 1984, 1985; Garramone & Smith, 1984). In addition, negative issue advertising, ads that attack the target’s issue positions, tends to be more effective than attacks made to the character or image of the opponent (Kahn & Geer, 1994; Roddy & Garramone, 1988). As a result, because the sponsor of the advertising is issue-attacking his opponent, his evaluations will be higher than the target of the ad. On the other hand, for the candidate who is the target of the advertisement, rebuttals¹ can be considered a strategy to lessen the effects of the sponsor’s attack (Garramone, 1985; Roddy & Garramone, 1988). In short, while some researchers found that negative ads are effective and produce the intended effects towards the target of the ad, others found that negative ads fail to deliver their main purpose, causing backlash effects towards the sponsor of the ad. Consequently, the evaluation of the target of the ad is improved.

Negative Political Advertisement and Attitude Formation

A negative political ad with concrete substantive information is more capable of distinguishing candidate’s qualities, position and performance as compared to the other type of political advertisements which contains less explicit information. It is observed that the more the perceived difference between the candidates greater the chance of voters’ attitude polarization. Therefore, by generating a clear difference, voters may be lead to favour one candidate strongly and not favour the other (Garramone, 1984). Researches on negative political advertising campaigns suggest that negativity may result in the intended and unintended effects of a voter’s disposition to favour or oppose a candidate. The intention of negative advertising is to create negative feeling towards the targeted candidate and positive feeling towards the sponsoring candidate (Garramone, 1984). An experimental study of negative newspaper and television advertising concluded that the image evaluation of the targeted politician is reduced because of the negative advertising (Kaid & Boydston, 1987).

Many researchers have examined the impact of political advertising on political candidates’ evaluation (Haddock & Zanna, 1997; Kaid & Boydston, 1987; Pinkleton, 1997; Shapiro & Rieger, 1992), vote intention and attitude towards the ad (Garramone, 1985; Garramone & Smith, 1984; Meirick, 2002; Pinkleton, 1997; Roddy & Garramone, 1988).

Negative Political Advertising and Voters’ Intention

Primarily, when a political party decides to air negative political advertisements, the desired goals are to denigrate the image of the opponent and increase the evaluation of the sponsor. Ultimately, a negative political advertisement aims to persuade people to vote for the sponsor candidate. Previous research on this issue has found that the political advertisements do produce behavioural effects.

Furthermore, a study has explored the influence of the sponsor and rebuttal on candidates’ perceptions and vote intentions; Garramone (1985) exposed participants to negative advertisements embedded in a newscast. The results show that viewers of an independent ad opposing a candidate demonstrated a decreased likelihood of voting for the target as compared to viewers of an advertisement that was sponsored by a candidate. Furthermore, viewers in the rebuttal condition demonstrated a less likelihood of voting for the target’s opponent than did viewers in the no-rebuttal condition. These findings are in line with an earlier study developed by Garramone and Smith (1984). In this study, the authors aimed to investigate the process of sponsor effects, focusing on the mediating roles of sponsor trustworthiness and advertisement evaluation. As a result, Garramone and Smith (1984) found that an ad that is independently sponsored is perceived as more trustworthy than an ad sponsored by a candidate, and consequently, the ad itself is evaluated more positively. Also, the results show that for voters who rely on political advertisements, an independent sponsor is more trustworthy than a party or a candidate sponsor.

Literature Gap and Research Objectives

Though there are chances for backlash, it is necessary in political communications to respond or rebut against the claim made by the opponent. According to political consultants, an attack without an answer can be very damaging (Bailey, 1988). There are evidences that a rebuttal ad can be successful in offsetting the effect of negative ad attack. Though rebuttal ad does not influence the perceptions of the original target, research substantiates that it reduces the evaluation of the candidate who first attacks (Garramone, 1985). In simple words, if A attacks B and B rebuts the attack, the rebuttal ad can be expected to decrease evaluations of A but not increase evaluations of B (Garramone, 1985). There was no study found comparing these two types of advertisements on the basis of variables of political decision making. Moreover, recent studies in this area are rare to find. The search in various database, namely Emerald, Routledge, J-Gate, Springer and J-store reveal that in South Asian context, there seems to be vacuum in this area. In this study, the researcher has tried to address the existing gap up to an extent. This study focuses on the following objectives:

To compare the effect of attack and rebuttal advertisements on attitude towards the advertisement.

To compare the effect of attack and rebuttal advertisements on attitude towards the sponsoring political party.

To compare the level of advertisement intrusiveness between attack and rebuttal advertisements.

To compare the effect of attack and rebuttal advertisements on intention to vote for the sponsoring political party.

Rationale of the Study

Prior survey of research has indicated that voters do recall negative ads. A survey across six southern states found that two-thirds of the respondents remembered seeing a negative ad during the 1986 elections (Johnson & Copeland, 1987). Gestalt suggested in his principle that negative information may counter to what people are accustomed to and expect from advertising messages and, as a result, stand out disproportionately. Previous research has also demonstrated that negative political ads may play a key role in candidate preference decision. Prior studies are undertaken for looking at differences between print and television advertisements for attitudes and credibility, but not for ad attitude components towards political ads. Previous studies focus on credibility of the medium (Moore & Rodgers, 2005), creativity with credibility (Dahlén, 2005), ad avoidance (Speck & Elliott, 1997), low-involvement context (Pelsmacker, Gueens & Anckaert, 2002) and objectivity versus subjective message claims (Darley & Smith, 1993). In this background, it is significant to expand the understanding by adding the output of an experiment comparing the attack and rebuttal type of television campaigns on the basis of attitude, intrusiveness and intention to vote.

Indian Political System and Gujarat State

India is a democratic nation where the president of India is head of the State and the prime minister is the head of the government. India has two structured governments, the union government at the centre and states at the periphery. The powers and limitations of both central and state governments are defined by the Constitution of India. Normally, at the end of every five years, separate elections are held to choose the representatives for the central (parliament) and state levels (legislative assembly).

The state of Gujarat is located in northwest part of India. It has the population of 60 million whose primary language is ‘Gujarati’. ‘Gujarati’ is ranked 26th among the most-spoken native languages in the world. The Gujarat legislative assembly has 182 members. Members of the legislative assembly are elected on the basis of adult suffrage from one of 182 constituencies. The leader of the majority party or coalition in the legislature or his or her designee acts as the leader (chief minister) of the legislative assembly. The chief minister will act as the chief of administration of the state. Since last three assembly elections only two parties, namely Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress party (INC), are main competitors for ruling the Gujarat state. Current government of Gujarat is of BJP which was elected in the year 2012 under the leadership of Shree Narendra Modi, the current prime minister of India.

Hypothesis for the Study

H₁: Advertisement difference is significant on attitude towards advertisement.

H_1a: Advertisement difference is significant on goodness towards advertisement.

H_1b: Advertisement difference is significant on likening towards advertisement.

H_1c: Advertisement difference is significant on interest towards advertisement.

H_1d: Advertisement difference is significant on creativity towards advertisement.

H_1e: Advertisement difference is significant on information towards advertisement.

H₂: Advertisement difference is significant on attitude towards political party doing these advertisements.

H_2a: Advertisement difference is significant on goodness towards political party.

H_2b: Advertisement difference is significant on likening towards political party.

H_2c: Advertisement difference is significant on pleasant towards political party.

H_2d: Advertisement difference is significant on quality towards political party.

H₃: Advertisement difference is significant on advertisement intrusiveness.

H_3a: Advertisement difference is significant on disturbing factor.

H_3b: Advertisement difference is significant on loud factor.

H₄: Advertisement difference is significant on probability to vote for the political party sponsoring the advertisement.

Research Methodology

This is a pre-experimental one-shot case study (х O1)² research design in which the television advertisement is shown as an independent variable. The limitation of this research design is absence of randomization. When total population may not be available in certain case, at the scene of major event, it may not be feasible to attempt to construct a probability sample (Cooper & Schindler, 2007). In this case, when numbers of intermediaries are in million and no such list is available, it is decided to use non-probability sampling method. It is believed that the carefully controlled non-probability sample often seems to give acceptable results (Cooper & Schindler, 2007). The data is collected from youngsters (age group of 18 to 30 years) from Gujarat who were having the knowledge of ‘Gujarati’ language. Three pairs of negative comparative ‘Gujarati’ advertisements which were used in Gujarat assembly election 2012 were identified. In all pairs, BJP advertisements were attack advertisements while INC advertisements were rebuttal advertisements.³ Each advertisement was shown to 40 respondents and they were asked to provide their feedback on close-ended interviewer administered questionnaire. By non-probability convenience sampling method, a study was conducted with 240 samples from Gujarat, comprising equally from BJP and INC leading assembly constituencies.

Questionnaire was structured with close-ended questions. The questionnaire was based on various scales measuring the effects of advertisement. For measurement of attitude towards the ad, five bipolar variables have been used. Subjects’ ad score was derived from an average of their ratings on seven-point scales; informative/uninformative, creative/uncreative, interesting/boring, like/dislike and good/bad. These scales, which include both affective and evaluative content, were selected on the basis of the review of existing research (e.g., Gardner, 1985; Mackenzie, Lutz & Belch, 1986). For measurement of attitude towards the political party (brand), an overall brand score was obtained from subjects’ average ratings about four bipolar variables on seven-point scales (poor quality/good quality, unpleasant/ pleasant, dislike quite a lot/like quite a lot and bad/good), existing research has (e.g., Gardner, 1985; Mitchell, 1986) guided the scale selection. For advertisement intrusiveness measurement, the scale used is developed by Li, Edwards and Lee (2002). It is a seven-point Likert scale containing eight statements. This scale uses expert-generated adjective list, expands possible measures using a thesaurus and finally reduces the number of items statistically to derive a new measure of advertising intrusiveness. The scale had been validated using samples in different experimental conditions and it is found to be valid, reliable and parsimonious. For measuring probability to vote, on the basis of expert opinion, 11 options have been provided. Out of which, a respondent needs to choose one, which best describes his state of mind after viewing the advertisement. The options were labelled as certain, practically certain, almost sure, very probable, probable, good possibility, fairly good possibility, fair possibility, some possibility, slight possibility, very slight possibility and no chance—almost no chance.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

Prior to examining the relationship between variables⁴ under study, the strength of the scale was assessed by examining its reliability. Reliability is the degree to which the observed variables measure the true value and is error free (Hair et al., 1998). The reliability of a measure indicates the extent to which it is without bias (error free) and hence ensures consistency measurement across time and across the various items in the instrument. Reliability can be defined as the extent to which measures are free from random error (Malhotra & Dash, 2007).

Cronbach’s alpha (or coefficient alpha) is the most common measure to judge the internal reliability of factors or constructs. The value of alpha can range from 0 to 1. The nearer the value of alpha to 1, the better is the reliability. The generally agreed upon lower limit for Cronbach’s alpha is 0.70, although it may decrease to 0.60 in exploratory research (Hair et al., 1998). The alpha value of 0.60 or less generally indicates unsatisfactory internal consistency reliability (Malhotra & Dash, 2007). In this study, the respective alpha values (Table 1) confirm the scale showing good internal reliability.

Table 1.

Reliability Statistics of Constructs

Variable	Number of Variable	Cronbach’s Alpha
Attitude towards Advertisement	5	0.887
Attitude towards Political Party	4	0.875
Advertisement Intrusiveness	8	0.730

Source: Author’s primary data analysis.

Attitude towards Advertisement to Type of Advertisement

One objective of this research is to establish relationship between type of negative advertisements and attitude towards advertisements. Considering this, advertisement is considered as an independent variable while attitude towards advertisement is considered as a dependent variable. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) test is administered because it is a multivariate extension of the univariate techniques used for measuring the differences between group means. As stated by Hair et al. (1998), MANOVA ‘…is a statistical technique that can be used to simultaneously explore the relationship between several categorical independent variables (usually referred to as treatments) and two or more metric variables’.

To measure significant difference related to the independent variables, one MANOVA test with repeated measures was conducted. The MANOVA results are shown (Table 2), and it was found that there is statistically significant difference between advertisements for the five dependent variables of attitude towards an advertisement, that is, goodness, likening, interest, creativity and information (Wilks’ Lamda = 0.830; Significance: p = 0.001 < 0.05).

Table 2.

Attitude towards Advertisement to Type of Advertisement

Effect		Value	F	Significance
Multivariate Tests
Type of Advertisement (Attack and Rebuttal advertisements)	Pillai’s Trace	0.170	4.668	0.001*
	Wilks’ Lambda	0.830	4.668	0.001*
	Hotelling’s Trace	0.205	4.668	0.001*
	Roy’s Largest Root	0.205	4.668	0.001*
ANOVA Tests Attitude Towards Ad
Goodness	–		10.335	0.002*
Likening	–		16.625	0.000*
Interest	–		12.823	0.000*
Creativity	–		7.823	0.006*
Information	–		1.361	0.246

Type of Advertisement/Attitude towards Ad	Goodness	Likening	Interest	Creativity	Information
Attack Advertisement (n = 120)	5.78	5.78	5.92	5.50	5.25
Rebuttal Advertisement (n = 120)	5.48	5.33	5.46	5.30	5.17

Source: Author’s primary data analysis.

As found (Table 2), the univariate F-ratio are significant for four dependent variables, that is, goodness (F = 10.335, Significance = 0.002), likening (F = 16.625, Significance = 0.000), interest (F = 12.823, Sign Significance = 0.000), creativity (F = 7.823, Significance = 0.006), but F-ratio was non-significant for a dependent variable, that is, information (F = 1.361, Significance = 0.246). Henceforth, the overall result supports H₁, H_1a, H_1b, H_1c and H_1d, but H_1e is not supported.

Attitude towards Political Party to Type of Advertisement

One objective of this article is to establish the relationship between type of negative advertisement and attitude towards political party sponsoring advertisements. Considering this, advertisement is taken as independent variable while attitude towards party is taken as a dependent variable. To explore the significance in relationship, MANOVA test is administered. The MANOVA results are shown (Table 3), and it was found that there is statistically no significant difference between advertisement for the four dependent variables of attitude towards brand, that is, goodness, likening, pleasant and quality (Wilks’ Lamda = 0.994; Significance: p = 0.157 > 0.05).

Table 3.

Attitude towards Advertisement to Type of Advertisement

Effect		Value	F	Significance
Multivariate Tests
Type of Advertisement (Attack and Rebuttal advertisements)	Pillai’s Trace	0.056	1.692	0.157
	Wilks’ Lambda	0.994	1.692	0.157
	Hotelling’s Trace	0.059	1.692	0.157
	Roy’s Largest Root	0.059	1.692	0.157
ANOVA Tests Attitude towards Political Party
Goodness	–		3.254	0.074
Likening	–		1.050	0.308
Pleasant	–		2.344	0.128
Quality	–		5.694	0.019

Type of Advertisement/Attitude towards Party	Goodness	Likening	Pleasant	Quality
Attack Advertisement (n = 120)	5.47	5.15	5.50	5.50
Rebuttal Advertisement (n = 120)	5.00	4.87	5.05	4.85

Source: Author’s primary data analysis.

The univariate F-ratio were not significant for the four dependent variables, that is, goodness (F = 3.254, Significance = 0.074), likening (F = 1.050, Significance = 0.308), pleasant (F = 2.344, Significance = 0.128), but F-ratio was significant for the dependent variables, that is, quality (F = 5.694, Significance = 0.019). Henceforth, the overall result does not support H₂, H_2a, H_2b and H_2c, but H_2d is supported.

Advertisement Intrusiveness

To identify sources underlying the advertisement intrusiveness, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was carried out. EFA is a technique aimed to identify number of latent constructs from a set of interrelated variables. Principal components method was used to extract the factors. The KMO (Table 4) measure of sampling adequacy was 0.807 indicating that analysis results are meritorious (Kaiser, 1970). Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant at 0.000 levels demonstrating that a high elevated degree of correlation between the variables exists (Hair et al., 1998).

There are eight variables in this data. Varimax rotation method was used with factors extraction with eigenvalue over 1. It resulted in extraction of two factors, which explained 66.677 per cent of variance. The minimum factor loading observed was 0.603 and the maximum loading was 0.873. The factors, their respective items with the numbers and their corresponding factor loading are given (Tables 5 and 6).

Table 4.

KMO, Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity and Significance Level

Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy	0.807
Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity
Approx Chi-square	358.401
Df	28
Significance	0.000*

Source: Author’s primary data analysis.

Note: * Significant at 0.001 level.

Table 5.

Description of Factors

Factor	Description	% of Variance	% of Cumulative Variance
Disturbing Factor	High possibility that the negative experience generated may remain limited to the viewer only	40.430	40.430
Loud Factor	High possibility that the viewer may spread the negative experience generated by word of mouth	25.248	65.677

Source: Author’s primary data analysis.

Table 6.

Composition of Each Factor Identified in Factor Analysis

Factors	Items	Factor Loading
Disturbing Factor	Ad is Disturbing	0.873
	Ad is Obtrusive	0.849
	Ad is Forced	0.845
	Ad is Distracting	0.805
	Ad is Intrusive	0.603
Loud Factor	Ad is Bothersome	0.814
	Ad is Interfering	0.798
	Ad is Invasive	0.760

Source: Author’s primary data analysis.

Advertisement Intrusiveness to Type of Advertisement

One objective of this article is to compare the type of negative advertisement on the basis of advertisement intrusiveness. Considering this, type of advertisement is taken as an independent variable while advertisement intrusiveness is taken as a dependent variable. For data analysis, MANOVA test is administered. The MANOVA results are shown (Table 7), and it was found that there is statistically no significant difference between type of advertisement for the two dependent variables of advertisement intrusiveness, that is, disturbing factor and loud factor. (Wilks’ Lamda = 0.961; Significance: p = 0.100 > 0.05).

Table 7.

Advertisement Intrusiveness to Type of Advertisement

Effect		Value	F	Significance
Multivariate Tests
Type of Advertisement (Attack and Rebuttal advertisements)	Pillai’s Trace	0.039	2.352	0.100
	Wilks’ Lambda	0.961	2.352	0.100
	Hotelling’s Trace	0.040	2.352	0.100
	Roy’s Largest Root	0.040	2.352	0.100
ANOVA Tests Advertisement Intrusiveness
Disturbing Factor	–		1.742	0.189
Loud Factor	–		2.798	0.097

Type of Advertisement/Attitude towards Party	Disturbing Factor	Loud Factor
Attack Advertisement (n = 120)	3.79	2.80
Rebuttal Advertisement (n = 120)	4.12	3.16

Source: Author’s primary data analysis.

The univariate F-ratio were not significant for the two dependent variables, that is, disturbing factor (F = 1.742, Significance = 0.189) and loud factor (F = 2.798, Significance = 0.097). Henceforth, the overall result does not support H₃, H_3a and H_3b.

Probability to Vote to Type of Advertisement

An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the significance of type of advertisement on voting intention of people for the sponsoring political parties. There is a significant difference in the intention to vote for the party sponsoring advertisement, that is, attack advertisement (M = 6.71, SD = 1.849) and rebuttal advertisement (M = 5.62, SD = 2.917) conditions; t (120) = 2.43, p = 0.000. Henceforth, the results support H₄.

Discussion of the Results

Despite widespread concern about the effect of various techniques of negative political advertisements, the comparative study between attack and rebuttal advertisements is not found. Campaigns by political party use them because they find it working; critics decry them because they seem to depress political participation. Therefore, this study tested the effect of attack and rebuttal advertisements on some variables of political decision making, namely attitude towards advertisement, attitude towards political party and advertisement intrusiveness. The study also compared the effect of both the types of advertisements on intention to vote in favour of the sponsor. For both the types of advertisements, a significant difference is found for attitude towards advertisement and intention to vote in favour of the sponsor. On both these variables, the effect of attack advertisement seems better compared to rebuttal advertisement.

It has been proven that the attack and rebuttal advertisements have different effect on viewers’ attitude towards advertisement. On the parameters of goodness, likening, interest and creativity significant difference is found, while on the parameter of information the difference is insignificant. Supporting this study, out of the few, in one of the examination of comparative political advertising, Hill (1989) found that voters reported significantly less favourable global and emotional attitudes towards positive political advertising than comparative and negative political advertising. Inline of a hierarchy of effects, negative political ads get more attentive (Sabato, 1981) and are better recalled (Lang, 1991). Adding to this, Brader (2005) says that the subjects reported liking candidate who sponsored a negative ad a little more than candidate who sponsored a positive ad. Attack advertisement has more positive impact on intention to vote in favour of sponsor compared to rebuttal advertisement. Supporting this outcome, it has been proved that, though rebuttal ads reduce the evaluation of the candidate who first attacked, they fail to influence perceptions of the original target (Garramone, 1985).

Implication of the Study

From this study, practitioners of political advertising may find some useful guidance. The most important implication of this study is for consultants of political campaigns. They should be aware of the possible effects to which voters’ attitudinal responses lead in order to create more effective campaign strategies. The impact of attitude towards the political ad on candidate evaluation is less explored in the past literature, even though it is well recognized that negative political advertising in general is impugned by voters (e.g., Roberts, 1992). This study indicates that attitude towards the ad is likely to be carried over to the candidates. Therefore, ad execution should be very carefully considered to assure that ads are informative in nature, creative, interesting and it should be liked. In all, consultants or practitioners should use attack advertisement as compared to rebuttal advertisement where low-quality production of ads is likely to generate lower ratings which may even hurt or affect the attitude towards the political party and a particular candidate. In the same line, Garramone (1985) found that rebuttal by the targeted candidate increased backlash against the (attacking) opponent, but failed to influence perceptions of the target.

Limitations and Direction for Future Research

Even after an election, two-thirds of survey respondents could recall, and describe, at least one negative political ad (Johnson-Cartee & Copeland, 1989). The past recall is one of the extraneous factors in post-test-only experimentation and it leaves all respondents unequal. The use of young participants, who can’t be considered the full representative of the general electorate, is the main limitation of this study. They are more educated and demonstrate less engagement in various forms of political participation than other groups of voters (Garramone, 1985). As convenience sampling method is used, the selection of units from the population on the basis of availability and/or accessibility is the major disadvantage. The limitation of this technique is that it is not possible to measure the representativeness of the information collected about the sample to the population. The small number of sample from one state limits the generalization of findings across India. Perhaps more participation would have enhanced the generalizability of the results. In relation to other global studies, the sample size on which this study was undertaken was small. Moreover, this study did not investigate the effects of repeated exposure to the advertisements on candidate’s evaluation. In fact, repeated exposure to negative ads is a real condition during election periods, and until now, little attention was given to this topic.

The aforementioned limitations of the study can be considered opportunities for future research. Apart from this, the impact of different variables on voting intention can also be measured for both types of advertisements with the help of some modelling technique, which was not used here because of small sample size. Use of pre-test–post-test type of research design and some probability sampling technique will definitely increase the usefulness and credibility of the outcomes.

Footnotes

Details of Advertisements

Pair	Attack Advertisement—BJP	Rebuttal Advertisement—INC
Pair	Description of the Advertisement	Description of the Advertisement
1	INC-led central government is doing injustice to the state of Gujarat in terms of building the highways by private companies. Because of this, the people of Gujarat have to pay toll tax. It is equivalent to a slap on the face of people of Gujarat.	Youth discussing about this attack advertisement in cafeteria says that the INC-led central government had done the development and BJP’s state government has done nothing except blaming the central government. One ends with reminding the other that Gujarat is the birth place of Mahatma Gandhi, where there is no place for violence (slap).
2	For a game, players of two teams are taking their T-shirts. The teammates wearing saffron T-shirts are humble and disciplined in their approach while the teammates wearing blue T-shirts are haphazard and undisciplined. As the colour saffron is the symbolic colour of BJP, the colour blue is assumed for INC. The team wearing saffron is confident and one person is leading it well, while the team wearing blue is confused and disputing on the leadership issue. The team wearing saffron is laughing on the opponent and the advertisement ends with a saying that there is ‘Consensuses in Gujarat’.	For a game, two teams are on ground wearing white T-shirts. T-shirts of one team are neat and clean and have the political symbol of INC while the T-shirts of the other team is dull and dirty. The caption of the team wearing dirty T-shirts shows aggressiveness but ultimately the team with political symbol of INC wins. The advertisement ends with a saying that ‘not only talk about consensus but also talk about opinion of people’.
3	Famous Gujarati singer ‘Arvind Vegda’ appears with a political version of his hit song ‘Bhai Bhai’. He says that the promises made by INC of providing homes and laptops are false. Another person looking like a common man provides his consent to the claims made by ‘Arvind Vegda’ by singing with him.	In the same tune used by ‘Arvind Vegda’, a group of youngsters sings some different words. The lyrics mean that BJP is making false claims, and services like ‘108’ emergency ambulance services, ‘Narmada Project’ and GIDC are the initiatives of INC-led central government. The advertisement ends showing a frustrated BJP supporter in the crowd singing in favour of INC.

Notes

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