Identifying principles for effective messages about chemicals in cigarette smoke

Abstract

US law requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to disclose information on harmful and potentially harmful chemicals in cigarette smoke (i.e., constituents) to the public. To inform this effort, we sought to identify principles for creating constituent messages that effectively discourage smoking. Participants were an online convenience sample of 1148 US smokers ages 18+. We developed a library of 76 messages about constituents only and constituents plus contextualizing information (i.e., toxic products that also contain the chemical, health effects, or both). We randomized smokers to receive 1 message from each of 7 message panels in a mixed between-/within-subjects experiment. Participants rated each message on perceived message effectiveness. Results indicated that smokers perceived messages about arsenic, formaldehyde, lead, uranium, and ammonia as more effective than messages about nitrosamines. Messages that contained information on toxic products, health effects, or both received higher effectiveness ratings than constituent-only messages. Among constituent-only messages, those that referenced multiple constituents received higher effectiveness ratings than those with fewer constituents. We conclude that chemical messages may have more impact if they pair known constituents with toxic product or health effect information. These message principles can be used to inform studies examining the impact of constituent messages on smoking beliefs and behavior.

Impact of e-cigarette health warnings on motivation to vape and smoke

“…7 We then integrated these hazards and harms into novel e-cigarette warnings based on our prior experience with developing tobacco risk communications. [33][34][35][36] Second, we created pictorial health warnings that combined each of the e-cigarette text warnings with a relevant photograph. A professional designer created these photographs using stock photos, stimuli developed in previous research studies and recent news stories about e-cigarette harms.…”

A Secondary Audience's Reactions to “The Real Cost” Advertisements: Results From a Study of U.S. Young Adult Smokers and Susceptible Nonsmokers

“…Limitations include the use of a convenience sample, which may limit the generalizability of study findings. For example, 20% of the sample identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, a higher prevalence than in previous MTurk samples 16,29 and in the U.S. population. 45 However, the inclusion of this understudied population at high risk for smoking 46 could also be viewed as a strength of the study.…”

“…A mean centering approach for each message reaction construct was used to tease out person-level and message-level effects. 16,33 Using negative affect as an example, the three negative affect items were averaged to create mean scores for each message rating. Then, each person's mean negative affect score was computed across the three ads (i.e., person-level negative affect).…”

“…32 The scale contains three items: (1) This ad makes me concerned about the health effects of smoking; (2) This ad makes smoking seem unpleasant to me; and (3) This ad discourages me from wanting to smoke. 16 The 5-point response scale ranged from strongly disagree (coded as 1) to strongly agree (5). The average of these three items formed a composite PME score (average a=0.87).…”

“…It is also important to assess predictors of young adults' ratings of perceived effectiveness of "The Real Cost." Perceived effectiveness is often used to evaluate messages in the early stages of development 16 or to examine the receptivity of campaigns in the field. 2 Perceived effectiveness ratings of tobacco prevention ads have been shown to prospectively predict smoking-cessation behavior and therefore may hold utility as an indicator of the likely success of tobacco-prevention messages.…”