Effects of Anti-Smoking Advertising Messages on Smokers

Abstract

This study analyzed the effects of anti-smoking advertising messages on smokers’ attitudes toward tobacco. It is essential to understand the anti-smoking advertising because the campaign is conducted annually and mostly by the television media. The purpose of this study is to find the most effective message type among fear appeals, self-efficacy appeal, and social norm appeal for smokers. Only the smokers are included in this study, and their attitudes towards smoking were evaluated by experimental design. Thus, it is important to investigate on the effects of advertising messages such as fear appel, self-efficacy, and social norm toward the anti-smoking attitudes of the smokers. In addition, this study also examines the effects of the anti-smoking advertising messages on tabacco companies. In order to fulfill the purposes of this study, the researchers adopted experimental design and the ANOVA was adopted for the analysis. This study showed that the most effective advertising message was social norm message, followed by self-efficacy message. The fear appeal advertising message was least effective. In addition, the evaluations of tobacco companies were not influenced by the exposure of the anti-smoking advertising messages. This study also showed that intentions to quit smoking were not influenced by the advertising messages. However, the self-efficacy message was successful to change the smokers’ attitude that smoking was harmful to society. Based on the findings, the researchers advised to adopt the self-efficacy ad message for the smokers because this message was the most effective for the smokers. It is also advised that anti-smoking ad itself does not affect negatively on tabacco companies. These results are intended to contribute to the future anti-smoking campaign designed for the smokers based on their message preference. Future studies are advised to include the popular endorsers, strength of fear appeals and specific anti-smoking techniques for the betterment of the persuasive effects for quitting tobacco.