A large body of research over several decades has grappled with how and whether fear can persuade consumers to change their health behaviors. Different models have been proposed to describe the cognitive and emotional processes involved. These include the curvilinear model (Janis, 1967; Quinn, Meenaghan, & Brannick, 1992), which posits that fear can persuade up to a certain threshold of tolerance, beyond which it becomes counterproductive; the parallel-response model (Leventhal, 1970), which proposes that emotional and cognitive factors act independently to mediate behavior, with emotional factors affecting internal attempts to cope with the threat (., by rationalizing or rejecting it) whereas cognitive factors determine whether the recommended behavior change will.
