Alcohol Brands Being Socially Responsible on Social Media? When and How Warning Conspicuity and Warning Integration Decrease the Efficacy of Alcohol Brand Posts among Under-Drinking-Age Youth

Abstract

While federal regulations and alcohol industry self-regulation have been exhorting alcohol advertisers to include warnings, such as legal drinking age, on alcohol advertisements, it is rare to see this practice on social media. This study investigated the effects of warning conspicuity and warning-ad claim integration on under-drinking-age youth’s reactions to beer brand posts on social media (i.e., Instagram) and explicated the underlying mechanisms. The findings demonstrate that large-sized warnings (versus small-sized warnings) and integrated warnings (versus nonintegrated warnings) attract more visual attention, respectively. When warnings are integrated to the focal claims of the brand posts, a big-sized warning evokes greater state reactance than a small-sized one. However, when the warning is separated from the claim, a small-sized warning triggers higher reactance than a big-sized one. Underage participants’ state reactance mediates the interaction effect of warning conspicuity and warning integration on brand attitudes and intentions to interact with the brand posts, which in turn affect their intentions to drink alcohol, respectively.

Keywords:

• Underage drinking
• alcohol warning
• psychological reactance
• visual attention
• drinking intentions

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the first author’s summer research fellowship from the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. The authors also thank the reviewers and editors for their guidance.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

The funder did not play any role in the entire research process. The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Notes

1 Participants’ TFDs were also transformed into a binary measure. Their TFD to an area of interest that lasted for at least 100 milliseconds was coded as having paid attention. Otherwise, TFD was coded as not having paid attention. We found that, in the small-sized + nonintegration condition, 22.1% paid visual attention to the warning; in the small-sized + integration condition, 60% paid visual attention to the warning; in the large-sized + nonintegration condition, 51.3% paid visual attention to the warning; in the large-sized + integration condition, 75.9% paid visual attention to the warning. The results of chi-square comparison show χ² = 3.89, p < .05, indicating no ceiling effect in terms of whether participants noticed the warnings across the four conditions.