Affective Responses towards Anti-Tobacco Advertisement Concepts

Audience:

Groups in tobacco control that are most likely to benefit from this study are the ones involved in creating anti-tobacco messages in the form of advertisements. 

Key Points:

The study pre-tests eight anti-tobacco advertisement concepts and evaluates emotional responses to these concepts. The concepts belonged to three themes: cessation, secondhand smoke and anti-tobacco industry advertisement concepts. The emotional responses towards different themes are compared. In addition to that, regression analysis is used to evaluate which emotions lead an advertisement concept to be perceived as more effective. 

The results revealed that cessation concepts induced more fear among smokers than non-smokers and secondhand smoke concepts induced guilt more among smokers than non-smokers. Anger was not significantly different between smokers and non-smokers for tobacco industry concepts. Emotions that emerged as significant predictors of perceived effectiveness were sadness and fear for cessation concepts; anger for secondhand smoke concepts; disgust, and sadness for tobacco industry concepts. 

Educational Experience:

The audience will be able identify how the target audiences are likely to respond to advertisements based on their smoking status. 

Benefits:

The results of the study will be able to guide the creation of anti-tobacco messages in advertising. The groups will be able to create effective messages based on whether they intend to reach out to smokers, non-smokers or both.