Background
illness and deterioration
Public health professionals frequently use persuasive messages to modulate people’s perceptions and behaviors. Health messages can be of two types: “gain-framed” (highlighting the advantages of compliance with a particular behavior) and “loss-framed” (emphasizing the disadvantages of non-compliance with a particular behavior). This categorization is based on the Prospect Theory in behavioral economics, which assumes that people value gains and losses differently [To date, many studies have examined the hypothesis that was proposed by Rothman and Salovey by investigating the effects of gain- and loss-framed messages on various health behaviors. A meta-analysis focused on preventive behaviors that aimed at avoiding illness and deterioration (e.g., smoking, physical activity, and diet) revealed that gain-framed messages significantly advocated preventive behaviors compared with loss-framed messages, although the difference was remarkably small [Social participation, which is generally understood as an individual’s involvement in activities that facilitate social or community interactions [This study aimed to investigate the effect of message framing on attitudes and intentions toward social participation in older Japanese adults. Social participation constitutes prevention, rather than detection. Therefore, based on Rothman and Salovey’s theory [