E-cigarette advertising exposure and implicit attitudes among young adult non-smokers

Abstract

Background: This study tested whether exposure to e-cigarette advertising affects the subliminal-spontaneous or automatic-attitudes towards e-cigarettes as a more pleasant or safer alternative to cigarettes among non-smoking young adults.

Methods: 187 young adult (mean age=21.9; SD=4.1) current non-smokers who had never used an e-cigarette were randomly assigned to one of the 3 conditions that involved viewing magazine advertisements. Two of the 3 conditions were experimental conditions where thematically different [harm-reduction ("Health") vs. social enhancement ("Social") focused] e-cigarette ads were interspersed among ads of everyday objects. The third condition was the control condition in which participants viewed ads of everyday objects only. Participants provided data on explicit (e.g., harm perceptions) and implicit [e.g., Implicit Association Test (IAT), Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP)] measures after viewing the ads.

Results: Relative to the Control condition, participants in the Social condition showed 2.8 times higher odds of being open to using an e-cigarette in the future. Participants in the Health condition showed significantly higher implicit attitudes towards e-cigarettes as a safer alternative to cigarettes than participants in the Control condition. E-cigarette stimuli elicited more positive spontaneous affective reactions among participants in the Social condition than participants in the Health condition.

Conclusions: E-cigarette ads may implicitly promote e-cigarettes as a reduced-harm cigarette alternative. Marketing of e-cigarette use as a way to enhance social life or self-image may encourage non-smoking young adults to try e-cigarettes. Findings may inform regulations on e-cigarette marketing.

Keywords: Advertising; E-cigarette; Implicit attitudes; Young adults.

Conflict of interest statement

No conflict declared.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Figures

Fig. 1

Implicit association test “D” scores across conditions. Bars represent standard errors. Asterisk indicates a statistically significant difference between conditions based on the planned contrast procedure, *p < 0.05.

Fig. 2

Affect Misattribution Procedure scores across conditions by cue type. ECIG = e-cigarette cue, CIG = cigarette cue. Bars represent standard errors. Asterisks indicate statistically significant differences between conditions based on the planned contrast procedure, *p < 0.05.