Protection motivation theory
Protection motivation theory (PMT) was originally created to help understand individual human responses to fear appeals.
[1][2] PMT is one model that explains why people engage in unhealthy practices and offers suggestions for changing those behaviors.
The theory was originally based on the work of Richard Lazarus, who researched how people behave and cope during stressful situations.
[5] While Richard Lazarus came up with many of the fundamental ideas used in the protection motivation theory, Rogers was the first to apply the terminology when discussing fear appeals.
To calculate the amount of threat experienced take the combination of both the severity and vulnerability, and then subtract the rewards.
Theoretically, higher threat appraisals should lead to negative arousal and coping and to increased psychological symptomatology.
Three routes through which coping can affect health include the frequency, intensity, duration, and patterning of neurochemical stress reactions; using injurious substances or carrying out activities that put the person at risk; and impeding adaptive health/illness-related behavior.".
For example, Boer (2005) studied on intention of condom use to prevent from getting AIDS guided by protection motivation theory.
[11] As the minority topics, the study presented prevention of nuclear war, wearing bicycle helmets, driving safety, child-abuse prevention, reducing caffeine consumption, seeking treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, inoculation against influenza, saving endangered species, improving dental hygiene, home radon testing, osteoporosis prevention, marijuana use, seeking emergency help via 911, pain management during and recovery after dental surgery, and safe use of pesticides.
Aside from personal physical health research, the application of protection motivation theory has extended to other areas.
Namely, researchers focusing on information security have applied protection motivation theory to their studies since the end of the 2000s.
A process-variance model of protection motivation theory was strongly supported in this context, as depicted in Figure 1.
