Distance Evaluation Effects in Advertising

It is argued people have learned over the course of their lives that cues associated with a source of stress diminish with an increase in distance from that source. This benefit should have increasing appeal to persons experiencing increasing levels of source specific stress. Two experiments, utilizing different populations of respondents, examine the effects of distance from a place of work on evaluations of advertised vacation resorts by persons experiencing different levels of work-related stress. In the first study, a strong linear trend in favorable attitudes toward a distant (as opposed to a close) resort was found as a function of increasing levels of work-related stress. In the second study, that linear trend was eliminated (replicated) through the presence (absence) of a work-related retrieval cue. The results suggest that distant locations appear attractive because of their perceived escape/avoidance value. That value increases as a function of work-related stress, which has attitudinal consequences contingent upon the availability of cues reminding respondents of work. Implications of the results in terms of the meaning of leisure, the development of more effective advertising appeals, as well as reconsidering past views of distance barriers between people and locations, are discussed.