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Exposure to The Real Cost campaign has prevented smoking initiation among its target audience (US youth ages 12-17). This within-subjects experiment, examines reactions to the campaign among a key secondary audience of young adult (ages 18-29) smokers (n=225) and susceptible non-smokers (n=339). Participants viewed three The Real Cost campaign television ads and reported their past exposure to, conversations about, and reactions to the ads. We examined message-level and person-level predictors of perceived message effectiveness (PME) using multilevel modeling. Susceptible non-smokers rated the ads higher on PME than smokers (mean: 3.6 vs. 3.3 out of 5, p<.01), but lower on message relevance and negative affective reactions to the ads (both p<.05). In both samples, ads that elicited higher negative affective reactions and message relevance and lower message reactance (i.e., resistance) received higher PME ratings (all p<.05). This indicates that the campaign may have beneficial spillover effects on non-targeted audiences.
Marissa G Hall, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Adam J. Saffer, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
Seth M. Noar, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill