Persuasive Impact of a Value-Congruent Smoking Prevention Message On Middle School Students In Suburb of Beijing, China

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: message-matching approach H1:  Family environment (parents/siblings’) and peers’ smoking behaviors will have an influence on teenagers’ perceptions about smoking and likelihood of starting to smoke. H2:  It is reasonable to expect that the value congruent smoking prevention message will result in (2a) more negative attitudes toward smoking compared to message that is not value-congruent or (2b) compared to the control condition which has no message. H3:  It is expected that the value-congruent anti-smoking message (3a) will cause respondents to focus more on the prevalence of smoking in their social circles (perceived descriptive smoking norm), (3b) will cause respondents to show greater disapproval for smoking (perceived injunctive smoking norm), (3c) will cause respondents to show more smoking prevention efficacy, (3d) will cause respondents to show greater awareness about smoking risks, (3e) will cause respondents to show less enjoyment for smoking given the severity of the impact that smoking related illness has on family. RQ1:  Will there be difference in message effectiveness and smoking beliefs and behaviors between smoking and nonsmoking participants? RQ2:  Will there be gender differences in response to the value-congruent message? H4:  Compared to females, adolescent males will (4a) show greater awareness of the presence of smoking, (4b) less disapproval for smoking, (4c) less smoking prevention efficacy, (4d) less awareness of the risks of smoking, and (4e) more enjoyment of smoking.

Methods and Results (informing the conceptual analysis): Three conditions were set up--value-congruency message, value-incongruency message, and control condition. While the value-congruent message showed some limited success with female adolescents, it was ineffective for all dependent variables examined with male adolescents.However, peer smoking behaviors were shown to be very influential for participants' perception of smoking.

Conclusions:  In sum, the results of this preliminary investigation reveal both good news and bad news about the efficacy of value-matching messages for smoking prevention.  For the most part, the value-congruent smoking prevention message manipulation showed some success with adolescent girls who revealed more negative attitudes toward smoking after exposure to the smoking-hurts-families message.  This result is encouraging as young women in particular represent a lucrative potential growth market for the sale of cigarettes in China. Young females were significantly different from young males in their perception of more social disapproval for smoking, more smoking refusal efficacy, less enjoyment of smoking, fewer misconceptions about the danger of secondhand smoking and fewer misconceptions about the health risks associated with smoking.  For females, the value-congruent message strengthened their perception of smoking as an undesirable, high health-risk behavior that they would continue to avoid.   This is what a persuasive smoking prevention message should do.

Implications for research and/or practice:   Message-matching theory indicates that the intended message should match values which are salient for respondents as they make decisions about whether or not to engage in or avoid a targeted health risk behavior. This proposed study provides meaningful results for future studies in the sense that peer-influence should be emphasized in antismoking campaign messages which target on Chinese adolescents.