Fear, Sadness and Hope: Which Emotions Maximize Impact of Anti-Tobacco Mass Media Advertisements among Lower and Higher SES Groups?

Abstract

Emotive anti-tobacco advertisements can increase quitting. Discrete emotion theories suggest evoking fear may be more effective than sadness; less research has focused on hope. A weekly cross-sectional survey of smokers and recent quitters (N = 7683) measured past-month quit attempts. The main predictor was level of exposure to four different types of anti-tobacco advertisements broadcast in the two months prior to quit attempts: advertisements predominantly evoking fear, sadness, hope, or evoking multiple negative emotions (i.e., fear, guilt, and/or sadness). Greater exposure to fear-evoking advertisements (OR = 2.16, p < .01) increased odds of making a quit attempt and showed similar effectiveness among those in lower and higher SES areas. Greater exposure to advertisements evoking multiple negative emotions increased quit attempts (OR = 1.70, p < .01), but interactions indicated this was driven by those in lower SES, but not higher SES areas. Greater exposure to hope-evoking advertisements enhanced effects of fear-evoking advertisements among those in higher SES, but not lower SES areas. Findings suggest to be maximally effective across the whole population avoid messages evoking sadness and use messages eliciting fear. If the aim is to specifically motivate those living in lower SES areas where smoking rates are higher, multiple negative emotion messages, but not hope-evoking messages, may also be effective.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Social Research Centre for the development of the weighting variables, advice on questionnaire design and rigorous survey fieldwork methods for the Victorian Tracking Survey. We acknowledge Professor Robert Hornik for his insightful questions and comments on an earlier draft. We also acknowledge the reviewers for their thorough examination, which substantially increased the quality of the final manuscript.

Notes

1. Advertisement exposure was defined slightly differently for different participants. That is, like previous research utilizing GRP data aggregated to the calendar month (M. Wakefield, Spittal, Yong, Durkin, & Borland, 2011), those who were surveyed in the first half of a month (e.g., 1st to 15th May) were assigned GRPs from the previous calendar month (e.g., April), while those surveyed in the second half of a month (e.g., 16th to 31st May) were assigned GRPs from the month of interview (e.g., May). Prior recent advertisement exposure from the two calendar months prior to the period in which “past month quit attempts” could have occurred was also assigned based on this method. For a small number of respondents (n = 249) who quit more than 14 days prior to interview and who were interviewed in the second half of a month (e.g., 16th to 31st May), the “past month quit attempt” occurred at the end of the period covered by the “prior recent advertisement exposure” variables, so that exposure potentially did not precede these attempts. A set of sensitivity analyses where these attempts were recoded to “0” (i.e., no past month attempt) revealed the same pattern of results as presented below, indicating that these cases did not drive the overall effects.

Additional information

Funding

The study was funded by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Partnership Project grant [#1016419] with VicHealth. The Victorian Tracking Survey was auspiced by Quit Victoria, with funding from VicHealth, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services and Cancer Council Victoria.