Promoting Smoking Cessation in China: Using an Expansion of the EPPM with Other-oriented Threat

Abstract

This study explored strategies to increase Chinese smokers’ cessation intentions, using the extended parallel processing model, or EPPM. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment was designed to examine the effects of self-oriented threat (present vs. absent), other-oriented threat (present vs. absent), and efficacy (present vs. absent) on smoking cessation intention. A total of 324 Chinese smokers aged 18–64 years participated in this study. The results revealed significant main effects of self-oriented threat, other-oriented threat, and efficacy on cessation intentions. Moreover, the presence of other-oriented threat was important, and the combination of presence of other-oriented threat and the presence of efficacy led to the greatest willingness to quit smoking, regardless of the presence of a self-oriented threat.

Notes

¹ In order to ensure sufficient power, we ran a prior power analysis before collecting data. According to the results of power analysis, the total sample size should be more than 299 (power = 0.85, α = 0.05). In our experiment, the total number of participants is 324, which have met the criteria. Thus, we believe that our findings are convinced.

² We compared the participants’ demographics (i.e., age, gender, education, income) among conditions to check the success of random assignment. ANOVA (Fage(7, 316) = 2.019, p = .05; Fincome(7, 316) = 1.352, p = .23) and chi-squared tests (χ2gender (7, N = 324) = 13.95, p = .05; χ2education (35, N = 324) = 37.36, p = .36) suggested no significant demographic differences between message conditions; thus, randomization was deemed successful.

³ The stimuli messages are available upon request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences[19CXW033]