Normative Influence of the Stars: The Relative Indirect Effects of Celebrity Exemplars on Vaping Norm Perceptions Through Liking, Parasocial Relationship Strength, and Wishful Identification

ABSTRACT

Although the influence of celebrities on public health-related attitudes and behaviors is well established, the specific role that celebrity examples play in shaping health-related social norm perceptions is not well understood. To examine the effect of celebrities on social norm perceptions, young adults were randomly assigned to read news articles about vaping that either featured one of four film stars using a vape pen or did not contain any celebrity exemplar. The presence or absence of a celebrity exemplar did not affect readers’ perceptions of vaping social norms. However, three types of audience involvement with the celebrities – liking, parasocial relationship strength, and wishful identification, were examined as mediators of the relative effects of the different celebrities on vaping norm perceptions. The results suggest that celebrities who people like more and those who they wishfully identify with less can wield a greater influence on social norms. PSR strength did not mediate indirect effects of celebrity on social norm perceptions. These findings indicate that celebrities can shape public perceptions of social norms through some types of involvement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval

This study was acknowledged by the West Virginia University Institutional Review Board and the requirement for informed consent was waived, Protocol #1902471053.

Data availability statement

Datasets for this research can be made upon request from the corresponding author after obtaining permission the institutional review board that acknowledged this study.

Notes

1. Because the conceptual distinction between descriptive and injunctive norms is well established, we ran versions of hypothesis test analyses with both the combined social norm scale and the two separate scales as dependent variables. The results of these analyses were nearly identical. That is, the pattern of the effects of celebrities on social norm perceptions was the same, regardless of whether the outcome was descriptive norm perceptions, injunctive norm perceptions, or a composite of the two.

2. All of the celebrity involvement measures – liking, PSR strength, and wishful identification were examined in a three-factor CFA that yielded adequate model fit (RMSEA = .060, CFI = .928, TLI = .907).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.