A Closer Look at Descriptive Norms and Indoor Tanning: Investigating the Intermediary Role of Positive and Negative Outcome Expectations

ABSTRACT

Indoor tanning is a risky behavior that dramatically increases skin cancer risk. Researchers from multiple disciplines aim to better understand this behavior to develop interventions and messages to curtail it. As such, we investigated the role of social norms and outcome expectations as predictors of tanning behavior as part of a larger test of constructs included in the Theory of Normative Social Behavior. In addition to offering additional empirical results to support theoretical claims for the importance of social norms and outcome expectations in predicting health behaviors, we offer indoor tanning-specific operationalizations in a conditional process model with the aim of assessing how content-specific measurements predict indoor tanning intentions. Results of a survey of adult indoor tanners from across the U.S. (N = 262) highlight when and how descriptive norms influence tanning intentions through the mediating roles of anticipatory socialization, injunctive norms, and health threat, and through the moderating role of mood-based tanning motivations. Implications for theory building as well as for intervention and message design are discussed.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest that affected the development, design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data.

IRB approval

This research was approved by the institutional review board at the University of Miami (20150530).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami.