Help me if you can: the advantage of farmers’ altruistic message appeal in generating engagement with social media posts during COVID-19

The purpose of this study is to establish which message appeal is more effective in generating consumer engagement with social media posts of small and medium-sized agri-food businesses that promote direct-to-consumer sales during a COVID-19 type crisis. Using quantitative content analysis, 1024 posts from 48 Israeli farmers' Facebook brand pages were categorized into altruistic messages (ethnocentric, toward farmers, toward the environment, and maintaining public health) and egoistic messages (economic, emotional, functional, and hedonic values). The effectiveness of the message appeals was determined by consumer behavioral engagement (comments, shares and likes) with the posts. The results show that farmers used more egotistic arguments (mainly functional and hedonic motives) than altruistic arguments during the three stages of the crisis. However, a one-way ANOVA test revealed that posts with altruistic messages (specifically, altruism toward farmers) or posts that combine altruistic and egoistic motivations equally yielded significantly more consumer behavioral engagement. Practical recommendations regarding agri-food communications in times of crisis are given.