Do Young Adults Attend to Health Warnings in the First IQOS Advertisement in the U.S.? An Eye-tracki
Friday, May 21, 2021
Posted by: Natalia Gromov
Jiaying
Liu, Joe Phua, Dean Krugman, Linjia Xu, Glen Nowak, Lucy Popova.
Do Young Adults Attend to
Health Warnings in the First IQOS Advertisement in the U.S.? An Eye-tracking
Approach.
Nicotine & Tobacco Research, Volume 23, Issue 5, May 2021, Pages 815–822, https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntaa243.
Introduction. In
October 2019, a heated tobacco product (HTP) IQOS debuted in the United States.
This study examined young adults' attention and cognitions in response to an
IQOS ad that carried two mandated textual health warnings (Surgeon General's
warning and nicotine warning), and how their vaping and smoking status may
interact with attention patterns to affect attitude and intention to use IQOS.
Methods. In
November 2019, college students (N = 164) viewed IQOS' first U.S. magazine ad
and two distractor ads. Viewing patterns were recorded with eye-tracking.
Masked recall and aided recognition, attitude and intention towards IQOS use
were later assessed with self-report. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions
and moderated mediation analyses examined the associations between visual
attention and viewers' cognitions about IQOS use.
Results. Promotional
content attracted significantly more attention compared to the warnings.
Attention to the Surgeon General's warning but not to the nicotine warning was
associated with recall and recognition of the warning's content. For
ever-vapers, greater attention allocation to the promotional content in the
IQOS ad was associated with more favorable attitude toward IQOS use, which was
in turn positively associated with intention to use IQOS. Attention allocation
to the warnings did not affect attitude or intentions, regardless of tobacco
use status.
Conclusions. The
results revealed the effects of IQOS promotional content overshadowed the two
health warnings in influencing young people's attitude and intention to use
IQOS. Young adults who vaped were more vulnerable to HTP advertising with
respect to future use and vaping may be a gateway to HTP use.
Implications. This
is the first eye-tracking study examining attention and cognitions associated
with the new IQOS ad exposure among young adults. Promotional content in the ad
attracted significantly more attention than the two warnings combined.
Attention to the Surgeon General's warning but not to the nicotine warning was
associated with recall and recognition of the warning's content. Greater
attention allocation to the promotional content led to a more favorable
attitude toward IQOS use which was associated with increased intention to use
IQOS for ever-vapers. However, greater attention allocation to the warnings did
not affect attitude or intentions to use IQOS.
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