THE MODERATING ROLE OF CONGRUENCE BETWEEN HUMOUR AND FUN CLIMATE OF THE COMPANY ON THE EFFECTS OF HUMOUR IN ONLINE JOB ADS

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1 1 THE MODERATING ROLE OF CONGRUENCE BETWEEN HUMOUR AND FUN CLIMATE OF THE COMPANY ON THE EFFECTS OF HUMOUR IN ONLINE JOB ADS Eeva-Liisa Oikarinen, University of Oulu, Oulu Business School, Finland Corresponding author: Eeva-Liisa Oikarinen, Oulu Business School, P.O. Box 4600 University of Oulu, This study investigates the effects of humour in the scarcely studied context of job advertising. A between-subject experimental design was used (n=121) to understand how is the level of congruence between humour and fun company climate moderating the advertising effects of humour in online job ads? The paper reports that humour has negative main effects on job seekers responses (attitudes) and show significant interaction effects between humour and the congruence between humour and fun climate on the effects on all measured job seekers responses (attitudes, intentions). The study contributes to emerging discussion related to congruence as meaningful moderator in humorous advertising and will give more understanding related to the risks of humour appeal in job advertising. This paper is qualified to participate for the Best Student Paper Award.

2 2 THE MODERATING ROLE OF CONGRUENCE BETWEEN HUMOUR AND FUN CLIMATE OF THE COMPANY ON THE EFFECTS OF HUMOUR IN ONLINE JOB ADS ABSTRACT This study investigates the effects of humour in the scarcely studied context of job advertising. A between-subject experimental design was used (n=121) to understand how is the level of congruence between humour and fun company climate moderating the advertising effects of humour in online job ads? The paper reports that humour has negative main effects on job seekers responses (attitudes) and show significant interaction effects between humour and the congruence between humour and fun climate on the effects on all measured job seekers responses (attitudes, intentions). The study contributes to emerging discussion related to congruence as meaningful moderator in humorous advertising and will give more understanding related to the risks of humour appeal in job advertising. INTRODUCTION Humour is a special type of incongruity element in advertising among others like irrelevance, contradiction, unexpectedness or mismatch (Lee and Schumann, 2004: 80). It has been acknowledged as a common practice in advertising (Eisend, 2009; Weinberger and Gulas, 1992) and recognized as one of the most widely studied advertising appeals (Voss, 2009). Humour has become more relevant in the modern workplace, when new generations, who value fun at work (Romero and Pescosolido, 2008; Lamm and Meeks, 2009) have entered job markets. Thus, humour could be seen as congruent value promise of fun climate of the company to the job seekers and humour usage might be a prominent tool for recruiters, who are seeking job applicants who are emphasizing fun aspects at work. The scientific discussion on recruitment advertising is still emerging (Van Hoye and Lievens, 2005) and the buying process of potential consumer (job seeker) is complicated when buying a job with company climate. Thus, job adverts as a special form of adverts are worth investigating. Moreover, the Internet offers a potent medium for humorous online advertising practices, while humour is the most common advertising appeal for viral ads (Eckler and Bolls, 2011; Porter and Golan, 2006; Golan and Zaidner, 2008) and online environment has been recognized as a leading media for companies when selecting and recruiting employees (Cappelli, 2001; Backhaus, 2004). These issues may have motivated some companies to adopt new online recruitment advertising tactics and using humour in online job ads context, where it has not been widely utilized or investigated earlier. Traditionally, it is suggested, that congruent messages create more positive responses when compared to incongruent ones (e.g. Kamins, 1990; Kamins and Gupta, 1994).This study investigates the effectiveness of humour in online recruitment advertising context. The practical managerial challenge behind this study is, how congruent humour usage, if included in a job ad should be related to the level of fun climate of the company and the study sets the following research question: How is the

3 3 congruence level between humour and fun company climate moderating the advertising effects of humour in online job ads? THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: CONGRUENCE MODERATING THE EFFECTS OF HUMOUR IN JOB ADVERTISING Congruence can be conceptualized in advertising in many ways. One definition is that it relates to advertising as a match between stimulus element, (e.g. product, brand or execution element in an ad) and one s existing schema related to that stimulus (Lee and Schumann, 2004). In online advertising context the congruence can be defined also as thematic congruence between the media context (e.g. a web page) and ad (web ad) (Janssens et al., 2012). On the one hand, earlier studies have shown that congruent messages create more positive responses than incongruent ones (e.g. Kamins, 1990; Kamins and Gupta, 1994). On the other hand, incongruent information is able to create more attention than congruent (see Lee and Schumann, 2004) and critical insights in some studies favour the effects of incongruent brand communications (e.g Dahlén et al., 2005; Lange and Dahlén, 2003; Törn, 2009). In this study understanding of humour is based on cognitive theories, which are known as incongruity (I) and incongruity resolution (IR) types of humour (Gulas and Weinberger, 2006). Incongruent type of humour has been much used in advertising (Alden et al., 1993) and more specifically IR-type of humour compared to incongruent seems to be more perceived as humorous by receivers of humorous ads (Flaherty et al., 2004). The main characteristic of IR-type of humour is that it contains surprise or inconsistency that demands processing by the receiver to come to terms with the interpretation of the message (Spotts et al., 1997). Moreover, personal temperament, age and gender affect the way that different types of humour are understood (Ruch et al., 1990; Ruch et al., 1996; Martin et al., 2003). Humour in advertising has many widely accepted positive effects on consumer reactions: attention to the ad (e.g. Duncan, 1979; Madden and Weinberger, 1984; Eisend, 2009) and more positive attitudes toward the ad and advertiser (Weinberger and Gulas, 1992; Sternhal and Craig, 1973; Eisend, 2009). However, there are also studies which have considered the risks and restrictions related to humour usage (e.g. Beard, 2008; Madden and Weinberger, 1984). Humour is possibly not suitable to be used in professional services settings (Fugate et al., 2000), in high involvement setting (e.g. Fugate, 1998), in service products with high personal relevance (e.g. health care) or with products relying on a serious or high technology image (McCullough and Taylor, 1993, Scott et al., 1990 in Fugate 1998), when usually strong arguments are expected rather than humour. The effects of humour in advertising depend on several moderating variables and some commonly used in research are comparisons between fictious vs. real brands, non-student vs. student samples and print vs. broadcast media (Eisend, 2011). Moreover, cultural orientation (Lee and Lim, 2008), involvement (Zhang and Zinkhan, 2006) or prior brand evaluations (Chattopadhyay and Basu, 1990) have also been described as moderating the effects of humour in advertising. However, the studies in consumer advertising focusing on the moderating role of congruence between humour and funniness of products are still short in supply, as an analogy to the moderating role of congruence between humour and fun company climate in job advertising context in this study. Fun company climate is a key aspect of the successful company culture because, for example, employees experiencing fun in the workplace are more satisfied in their job (Karl and Peluchette, 2006) and workplace fun is a strong predictor of applicant attraction (Tews et al., 2012). All previously mentioned issues

4 4 make using humour in job adverts as a prominent tool for recruiters, who are seeking job applicants who are emphasizing fun aspects at work. Hypotheses H1-H3 are generated based on theoretical knowledge related to the negative/positive effects of humourous advertising on attitudes/intentions. Moreover, the final hypotheses include also potential moderating effect of congruence between humour and fun climate on the effects of humour in job ads. The assumption was made related to the nature of congruence: In low congruence situation, the humorous job ad will have more negative responses than the nonhumorous job ad. In high congruence situation, the humorous job ad will have more positive responses than the nonhumorous job ad. H1a-e: Humour - fun company climate congruence moderates the negative effects of humour in online job ad content on attitudes to a) job ad, b) company, c) job, d) project manager, e) industry When there is a positive association between attitudes towards an object and the intention to carry out behaviour vis-à-vis this object (Ajzen, 1991; Cooke and Sheeran, 2004), we expect that humour content in a job ad will lower intentions to apply for the job in the ad. Hence, after including humour-company climate congruence element as a potential moderator, we formulate the second hypothesis: H2: Humour fun company climate congruence moderates the negative effects of humour in online job ad content on intentions to apply for the job. The reason why adverts in general are shared is very probably their ability to spark emotion (Phelps et al., 2004) and viral aspects are more important for advertisers (Bergers and Iyengar, 2013). Assuming that job ads with humour are likely to behave similarly to consumer-related ads when it comes to viral aspect. Further, more specifically, when congruence as an moderating factor is included: H3: Humour fun company climate congruence moderates the positive effects of humour in online job ad content on intentions to share a job ad. The overall conceptual model of the study is presented in Figure 1 in Appendix 1. RESEARCH DESIGN OF THE EXPERIMENT: PRETESTS, STIMULUS DEVELOPMENT, DATA COLLECTION AND MEASURES The study is a 2 (humour: humour vs. nonhumour) x 2 (company climate: funny vs. boring) between-subject experimental design (Croson, 2002; Söderlund and Dahlén, 2010) with first factor humour (present/absent) and second factor perceived level of company climate (funny/boring) in relation to a job (see Appendix 1, Table 1). A qualitative pretest (10 undergraduates business student respondents answered literally to open-ended question) and A quantitative pretest (22 university business student respondents) were executed to find out what types of companies or industries university business students as job seekers evaluate being as the funniest and the most boring types of companies and industries to work with. Manipulation of climate of the company, was based on selection of industries with high and low in fun climate ( funny versus boring companies) utilizing the results of pretests. The funny company was developed as HealthVision, fictional small high-tech start-up company without an established reputation operating in the e-health industry. IT company in a high tech industry was considered relatively funny among business students in the quantitative pretest (M=6.9) (10 point scale not fun at all 1 to very much fun 10). Job ad comprised the typical elements of an online job ad and copy stated that the company was looking for two trainees, targeting undergraduate students in economics, software engineering and healthcare. The language of the ad and subsequent questionnaire reflected the nationality of the participants, because humour is best understood in its cultural context. The boring company, TelConnect, operating telephone sales (telemarketing) was created, because in the

5 5 quantitative pretest company operating telephone sales work was rated as the lowest mean value (M=3.2) of all the 24 different company/industry types, which were asked to be rated by respondents. Companies with low fun climate ( TelConnect ) and high fun climate ( HealthVision ) were modified to produce versions with incongruity resolution type of humour as humorous stimuli, because the incongruent resolution type of humour has been identified by Alden et al. (1993) as frequently used in advertising in general. More specifically the personification type of humour was used, which concerns attributing human characteristics to animals, plants and objects (Catanescu and Tom, 2001). This is an example of humour type which demands resolution and as an example of this was HealthVision is a furry ICT company in the wellness sector, currently employing five people whose bark is fortunately worse than their bite. Humour appeared only in the section describing the company and humour manipulation was conducted by changing individual words and the other content was constant between the ad versions. The stimulus material (and English translations of the job ads) used in the study are available from the author by request. Participants (n=121, 58 men, aged 20-45, M=25.7 years) were volunteers undergraduate students, which are representative sample for investigating responses of younger job seekers to humourous stimuli used in job adverts as most will soon be entering the job market (Berthon et al., 2005) and were the target group seeking for a trainee job. Participants were randomly allocated one of the four versions of the job ad with different stimuli (see Appendix 1, Table 1): 35 reviewed version 1, 27 reviewed version 2, 29 version 3, and 30 version 4. The distribution of male and female between four treatment groups was not significantly different (Pearson Chi-Square 5.811, df=3, p=0.121>0.05). The objective of the study was informed to the participants as studying how people perceive job ads with literal instructions how to fill the questionnaire forms. Perceived humorousness was measured as for the manipulation check of humour, with a set of adjective pairs (see Appendix 1, Table 2) scored on a 10-point scale. All the hypotheses with related used measures (perceived funniness of job, attitudes, intentions), items and Cronbach s alphas are presented in Table 2 in Appendix 1. FINDINGS Manipulation check of humour was done through Univariate analysis of variance: Dependent variable was chosen perceived humorousness of job ad, and fixed factors were humour group and congruence as categorical variables to check interaction effects. F(1,116), F=32.2, p= M Nohumour =3.2, M Humour =5.0. There was no significant interaction effect between humour and congruence on perceived humorousness, which indicated that manipulation of humour was successful. Similarly, the manipulation check of the company fun aspect was tested examining the level of the perceived funniness of the company climate in funny and boring company climate situations (see Table 3 in Appendix 2). Table 3 in Appendix 2 represents the main results of this study: Means (with standard deviations) of manipulation assessment values and dependent variables for each experimental conditions. Also the main effects of humour and interaction effects between humour and humour/company climate congruence were presented. The hypotheses related 1 a-e were supported when there was both significant main effect and significant interaction effect. The interactive effects of humour and the level of congruence between humour and company climate on attitudes variables are presented in the Figure 2 in Appendix 3. As preliminary findings, the individual figures show that there was a significant interaction effect between humour and the level of congruence on all output variables. The hypotheses related 2 and 3 were not supported when there was not significant main effect of

6 6 humour, although there was significant interaction effect between humour and congruence. The interactive effects of humour and the level of congruence between humour and company climate on intention- variables are presented in the Figure 3 in Appendix 4. The present study has examined how the level of congruence between humour and fun company climate is moderating the advertising effects of humour in online job ads? As a summary of empirical findings, the study has shown that incongruent resolution type of humour in online job ads has significant negative main effects on attitudes to the job ad, company and project manager. Humour has also negative (but nonsignificant) main effect on attitude to job and attitude to industry. Humour has slightly negative (but nonsignificant) main effect on intention to apply a job. The only positive main effect of humour (nonsignificant) is on intention to share a job ad. Moreover, the results show that there was significant interaction between humour and the congruence level between humour and fun climate of the company on all attitude variables (job ad, job, company, project manager, industry) and intention variables (intention to share and intention to apply). The results indicate that congruence moderates the effects of humour in online job ads. DISCUSSION The study has investigated humour in recruitment advertising context and extends advertising theory on the effects of humour in multiple ways (Van Hoye and Lievens, 2005). First, the findings show that incongruent resolution type of humour has significant negative main effects on job seekers attitudes to the job ad, attitudes to the company and attitudes to the project manager. The results differ from earlier studies in consumer advertising context, which have reported positive effects of humour (Eisend, 2009; Weinberger and Gulas, 1992; Sterhal and Craig, 1973). However, the main effect findings of this study are consonant to the individual study related to the effects of humour in job ad context by Oikarinen (2013) related to attitudes to job ad and attitudes to company. The study offers contribution to the discussion related to the risks of using humour in advertising in general (Beard, 2008; Madden and Weinberger, 1984) because results show that humour usage in job advertising context seems indeed risky. By identifying new specific moderator this study will give new insights broader discussion related to humorous advertising literature, where different moderators have been identified, such as cultural orientation (Lee and Lim 2008), involvement (Zhang and Zinkhan, 2006) or recently interaction effects between gender and type of humour (Schwarz et al., 2015). The findings inform that congruence between humour and company climate has strong moderating effects to the effects of humour in online job ads on job seekers responses and the more favorable effects are induced in high congruency situation. For managers, these results offer insights about the risks related humour usage in job advertising context and suggest that it would be more favorable seeking for congruency between humour usage in job adverts and actual company climate. This study has some limitations which will give ideas for further research. The choice of the population other than students would be beneficial to be able to generate more generalizable findings. Further studies should be carried out in different cultural contexts to allow for crosscultural comparisons (Biswas et al., 1992; Hatzithomas et al., 2009; Laroche et al., 2014) and age should be considered also as a potential moderator in future studies. The effects of reallife companies job ads data would be worth investigating with emphasis on different types of humour (e.g. more playful humour types).

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10 10 APPENDIX 1: Figure 1. Conceptual model of the study./table 1. The design of the study/table 2. Hypothesis with related measures, items and Cronbach s alphas. Figure 1. Conceptual model of the study: The congruence between humour and fun company climate as moderating the effects of humour. Table 1. The design of the study. Concruence Humour in job ad, perceived funniness of company climate (1)No humour in job ad with Fun company climate (2)Humour in job ad with Boring company climate (3)Humour in job ad with Fun company climate (4)No humour in job ad with Boring company climate Table 2. Hypothesis with related measures, items and Cronbach s alphas. Hypothesis Measure Items Description of items and claims, 10 point scale, Manipulation check PercHum, perceived humorousness towards job ad Voss (2009), Zhang (1996) mean of the items calculated Nonhumorous humorous, Not funny funny, not playful playful, not amusing amusing, dull not dull, boring not boring α 0.92 Manipulation check PercFun, perceived funniness of job Modified from perceived humorousness,voss (2009), Zhang (1996) Not funny funny, not playful playful, not amusing amusing, dull not dull, boring not boring 0.92 H1a A jobad, attitude to job ad Mitchell and Olson (1981), Söderlund and Dahlén (2010) Bad good, dislike like, negative impression positive impression, uncomfortable comfortable 0.95 H1b A comp, attitude to company Mitchell and Olson (1981), Söderlund and Dahlén (2010 Bad good, dislike like, negative impression positive impression,uncomfortable comfortable 0.96 H1c A job, attitude to job Mitchell and Olson (1981), Söderlund and Dahlén (2010) Bad good, dislike like, negative impression positive impression,uncomfortable comfortable 0.96 H1d A pm, attitude to project manager Mitchell and Olson (1981), Söderlund and Dahlén (2010 Bad-good, dislike-like, negative impressionpositive impression,uncomfortable-comfortable 0.97 H1e A industry, attitude to industry Mitchell and Olson (1981), Söderlund and Dahlén (2010) Bad-good, dislike-like, negative impressionpositive impression,uncomfortable-comfortable 0.98 H2 Int send, intention to apply 3 items, probability of sending application Unlikely likely, not probable probable, impossible possible 0.94 H3 Int share, sharing intentions Brown, Bhadury, & Pope, 2010, Huang et al. (2012) Probability of passing on via social media, probability of telling others about job ad, probability of talking about job ad (1 very unlikely and 10 very likely) 0.87

11 11 APPENDIX 2: Table 3. The main results of the study. Table 3. The main results of the study. Response variable Mean(SD) Level of congruence between humour/company climate No Humour (M/SD) Humour (M/SD) Main effect of humour Interaction effect between humour and concruence Hypothesis Perceived Humorousness Perceived funniness of the job H1a: Attitude job ad H1b: Attitude comp 3.4(1.4) 2.9(1.6) 4.7(1.7) 3.6(2.0) 6.7(1.7) 5.8(1.9) 7.0(1.4) 5.4(1.9) 4.9(2.3) 5.1(1.9) 4.7(1.9) 5.5(1.7) 4.1(2.3) 5.1(1.7) 4.4(2.1) 5.5(1.7) F(1,116) F=32.2, p=0.0, M Nohumour=3.2, M Humour=5.0 * Main effect of fun climate F(1,116) F=8.5, p=0.004 M Boring Climate=4.1 M Fun Climate =5.0 F(1,116)=23.3, p=0.0 M NoHumour=6.3 vs. M Humour=4.6 F(1,115)=14.4, p=0.0 M NoHumour=6.3 M Humour=5.0 Not significant interaction *fun climate and congruence F(1,116), F=8.7, p= F(1,116)=7.0, p=0.009 F(1,115)=17.7, p= Manipulation successful Manipulation partially successful Supported Supported H1c: Attitude job H1d: Attitude pm H1e: Attidute industry H2: Intention to apply for a job H3: Intention to share job ad 6.6(1.5) 4.1(2.0) 6.3(1.4) 5.7(1.6) 7.4(1.5) 3.0(2.1) 4.4(2.8) 2.3(1.7) 3.7(2.5) 2.4(1.9) 3.6(2.3) 6.1(1.8) 4.5(1.9) 5.1(2.0) 3.6(2.1) 6.3(2.1) 2.2(1.6) 3.5(2.2) 3.3(1.8) 3.9(2.1) F(1,115)=2.2, p=0.14 M NoHumour =5.5 M M Humour =4.8 F(1,111)=14.3, p=0.0 M NoHumour=6.0 M Humour=4.8 F(1,112)=0.3, p=0.57 M NoHumour=5.4. M Humour=5.0 (Main effect of congruence) F(1,112)=5.0, p=0.03 F(1,117)=1.8, p=0.19 M NoHumour=3.4 M Humour=2.9 F(1,117)=2.2, p=0.14m NoHumour=3.1 M Humour=3.6 F(1,115)=50.3, p=0.000 F(1,111)=3.3, p=0.07(<0.10) F(1,112)=96.9, p=0.000 F(1,117)=18.2, p=0.000 F(1,117)=6.1, p=0.015 Not supported Supported Not supported Not supported Not supported

12 12 APPENDIX 3: Figure 2. The interactive effects of humour and the level of congruence between humour and company climate on attitudes variables. Figure 2. The interactive effects of humour and the level of congruence between humour and company climate on attitudes variables.

13 13 APPENDIX 4: Figure 3. The interactive effects of humour and the level of congruence between humour and company climate on intention to send and application and intention to share job ad variables. Figure 3. The interactive effects of humour and the level of congruence between humour and company climate on intention to send and application and intention to share job ad variables.