Priming from the Pulpit: Extending Regulatory Focus Theory to Church Services

Authors

Clark D. Johnson, Pepperdine UniversityFollow
Brittney C. Bauer, Loyola University ChicagoFollow
Christine Christine Ascencio, University of Wisconsin La CrosseFollow
Yunmei Kuang, Utah Valley UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2019

Publication Title

Nonprofit Management & Leadership

Volume

29

Issue

3

Pages

437-447

Publisher Name

Wiley

Abstract

The purpose of this research note is to extend a powerful cognitive psychology theory—regulatory focus theory— to a specific nonprofit organization: churches. We apply this theory to the design of church services to model how church leaders can structure services to enhance congregant experience and generate positive behavioral outcomes. We present an experiment utilizing 126 adult Americans as initial evidence for our framework. The results indicate that using appropriate regulatory focus priming strategies can increase congregant donations.

Comments

Author Posting © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Wiley for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nonprofit Management & Leadership, VOL. 29, ISS.3, March 2019.https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21335

Recommended Citation

Johnson, Clark D.; Bauer, Brittney C.; Christine Ascencio, Christine; and Kuang, Yunmei. Priming from the Pulpit: Extending Regulatory Focus Theory to Church Services. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 29, 3: 437-447, 2019. Retrieved from Loyola eCommons, School of Business: Faculty Publications and Other Works, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nml.21335

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Copyright Statement

© Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 2018.