Emotional Responses and Perceived Relative Harm Mediate the Effect of Exposure to Misinformation about E-Cigarettes on Twitter and Intention to Purchase E-Cigarettes among Adult Smokers

Abstract

There is a gap in knowledge on the affective mechanisms underlying effects of exposure to health misinformation. This study aimed to understand whether discrete emotional responses and perceived relative harm of e-cigarettes versus smoking mediate the effect of exposure to tweets about the harms of e-cigarettes on Twitter and intention to purchase e-cigarettes among adult smokers. We conducted a web-based experiment in November 2019 among 2400 adult smokers who were randomly assigned to view one of four conditions of tweets containing different levels of misinformation. We fitted mediation models using structural equation modeling and bootstrap procedures to assess the indirect effects of exposure to tweets through perceived relative harm of e-cigarettes and six discrete emotions. Our findings support that exposure to tweets about harms of e-cigarettes influence intention to purchase e-cigarettes through perceived relative harm, discrete emotional responses, and serially through emotional responses and perceived relative harm. Feeling worried, hopeful, and happy mediated the effects of condition on intention to purchase e-cigarettes. Feeling scared, worried, angry, and hopeful mediated the effects serially through perceived relative harm. Affective responses and perceived relative harm following exposure to misinformation about e-cigarette harm may mediate the relationship with intention to purchase e-cigarettes among adult smokers.

Effects of brief exposure to misinformation about e-cigarette harms on Twitter on knowledge and perceptions of e-cigarettes

“…like, share), and emotions produced by the message (results presented elsewhere). 15 , 16 After exposure, participants completed post-test measures of knowledge and harm perceptions. They then answered questions on smoking behavior, prior e-cigarette misinformation exposure, social media use and demographic characteristics.…”

“…share, like) tweets that e-cigarettes were just as or more harmful than smoking, 15 we also found that affective responses and perceived relative harm following exposure to misinformation about e-cigarette harms may mediate the relationship with intention to purchase e-cigarettes. 16 …”

“…share, like) tweets that e-cigarettes were just as or more harmful than smoking, 15 we also found that affective responses and perceived relative harm following exposure to misinformation about e-cigarette harms may mediate the relationship with intention to purchase e-cigarettes. 16 This current study examined the effect of brief exposure to misinformation found on Twitter about e-cigarette harms on smoker's knowledge and harm perceptions of e-cigarettes relative to combustible cigarettes, across US versus UK populations. We define knowledge as being aware of factual information about e-cigarette constituents and health effects of e-cigarette use.…”

Evaluating the perceptions of pesticide use, safety, and regulation and identifying common pesticide‐related topics on Twitter

“…Twitter, a real-time microblogging platform with a generous data availability policy for academic research, has been widely used to understand public perceptions of, and activism on, the health risks of consumer products. Past studies have focused on e-cigarettes (Liu et al, 2021), dietary supplements (Wang et al, 2021), and genetically modified organisms (Jun et al, 2020).…”