The Power of Fear in Pictorial Tobacco Warnings: Emotions, Health Cognition and Smoking Cessation Intention

• In Event: HIGH-DENSITY: Tobacco Warning Label Mechanisms and Effects

Abstract

Much research in the area of smoking cessation campaign suggests that emotional responses accompanied by pictorial tobacco warnings could motivate smokers to stop smoking. This paper tests how emotional states (i.e., fear, anger, and sadness) tagged with pictorial tobacco warnings could affect health-related cognition variables (i.e., efficacy, self-stigma, and threat appraisal), and furthermore smoking cessation intention, and whether a fear appeal video of smoking could moderate these relationships. The overall results of an online experiment with survey among 270 South Korean smokers highlight the distinct roles of different emotions in fear appeal literature, based on the significant influence of fear, but not anger and sadness, on health cognition and smoking cessation intention. Specifically, a fear appeal video only moderated the causal path from a) fear  efficacy on pictorial tobacco warnings  smoking cessation intention and b) fear  stigma on smoking  smoking cessation intention. Based on the results, theoretical implications and practical applications were discussed.

Authors

• Yungwook Kim, Ewha Womans U

• Jiyoung Lee, Syracuse U