Guilt appeals are common promotion strategies used by animal welfare organizations and animal shelters; however, little research has paid enough attention to the formation of guilt appeals and the association among different elements of guilt appeals. The purpose of this study is to investigate the frequency of different guilt appeal-generating elements used in animal welfare campaigns and the relationship among these elements. A content analysis of 338 animal welfare campaign posters for eight animal welfare topics was conducted using data from Google and Bing image search engines.

The research found that reactive guilt and anticipatory guilt are both most frequently used in animal welfare campaigns. In addition, most campaign posters tend to include harmfulness in their content. The statements of fact and victims are the most frequently expressed verbal and visual message, respectively. This study also found that components of guilt appeals are associated with different types of guilt. However, the association between guilt types, the intensity of guilt, and visual messages dis not show any statistical significance. Overall, this study advances the understanding of how animal welfare organizations attempt to achieve their persuasive goals by using guilt appeals. Moreover, the findings from this study provide a foundation on how guilt is created from theoretical and practical perspectives for those interested in researching the effect of guilt appeals used in animal welfare campaigns.