Affective Responses towards Anti-Tobacco Advertisement Concepts

This study pre-tests the advertisement concepts created for a tobacco control campaign. A total of eight advertisement concepts were classified as cessation, secondhand smoke or tobacco industry advertisement concept. Using t-tests, the differences in affective responses for the concepts between smokers and non-smokers were tested. Regression analysis was conducted to identify emotions that significantly influenced the perceived message effectiveness of the concepts. The results revealed that cessation concepts induced more fear among smokers than non-smokers and secondhand smoke concepts induced guilt more among smokers than non-smokers. Anger was not significantly different between smokers and non-smokers for tobacco industry concepts. Emotions that emerged as significant predictors of perceived effectiveness were sadness and fear for cessation concepts; anger for secondhand smoke concepts; disgust, and sadness for tobacco industry concepts.