Psychological Perception of Social Marketing from the Perspective of Women and Men

Abstract

Social marketing uses marketing principles to promote voluntary behavior for social good, yet campaign effects often vary across audience segments. This paper synthesizes secondary evidence on gender-patterned psychological perception of social marketing, focusing on cognitive appraisal, affective response, and motivational resistance. A structured narrative review combined peer-reviewed syntheses on risk perception, risk-taking, empathy, tailoring, and fear appeals (Ajzen, 1991; Gustafson, 1998; Byrnes et al., 1999; Witte, 1992; Noar et al., 2007) with openly available indicators from the World Health Organization and the European Commission. Public data highlight domains with marked gender gaps in exposure: males are typically about three times more likely to die in road crashes globally (WHO, 2023), and tobacco use in the WHO European Region is projected to remain higher among men than women in 2025 (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2025). Eurobarometer results show that men are more often well informed about climate change, while women are more often uncertain, suggesting different routes from information to intention (European Commission, 2008). Across sources, women tend to report higher perceived risk and stronger care-oriented concern. In contrast, men more often combine higher confidence with greater risk normalization, which can increase resistance to controlling messages (Brehm, 1966). The synthesis suggests that gender-aware social marketing should prioritize mechanism-based segmentation across priority domains, pair threat content with clear, doable efficacy steps, and use autonomy-supportive framing while avoiding stereotypes (iSMA, ESMA & AASM, 2013). Limitations include binary gender reporting and contextual variability; future work should test these mechanisms experimentally and intersectionally.