The missing role of moral values in anti‐vaping messaging

Abstract

Vaping‐related illnesses are on the rise. Various anti‐vaping campaigns have been launched, but these marketing campaigns may be missing a core component of the reason that consumers vape—consumers perceive vaping as more moral than alternatives. Our research builds off belief congruence theory to examine this conjecture and accompanying solutions through three studies. Studies 1 and 2 show positive relationships between vaping morality perceptions and vaping attitudes/behavior in addition to identifying religiosity as an explanatory factor. Study 3 then experimentally manipulated marketing messaging to show that morality‐based messaging was most effective at increasing immorality perceptions and decreasing positive affect toward vaping, particularly for higher religiosity consumers.

Using Moralization as a Persuasion Strategy in Public Health Messages: A Cross-Sectional, Experimental Study on Vaping

“…A secondary purpose was enlisting their help in evaluating the visual characteristics of a public health message. To this end, they were informed that we would show them a new public health ad, which health officials planned on publicly displaying in the following months on TV and other media channels [ 13 ].…”

“…The rationale behind this strategy was that shifting the focus from health implications to moral values would strengthen people’s motivation to change their behaviors in the desired direction because of the importance that human beings place on being socially perceived as moral [ 10 ]. Due to the increased prevalence of vaping and its potential negative social and health effects [ 11 , 12 ], it was proposed that moralization be used strategically to curtail the use of e-cigarettes in anti-vaping health campaigns [ 13 ]. However, more and more studies show that moralizing public health messages lead to attitude moralization in the general public, which can severely affect social cohesion and risk perception, suggesting that employing it in health campaigns might be more dangerous than previously thought and questioning its efficiency for the target population as well [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ].…”

“…The health of the people who deviate from the new social norm can also be negatively affected, either through the distress associated with being stigmatized and discriminated against [ 2 ] or due to paradoxical effects associated with perceived moral reproach [ 33 ], such as maladaptive coping mechanisms (i.e., “defensive overkill” responses to perceived moral threat [ 23 ]), such as binge eating in the case of weight moralization [ 14 ]. Finally, health behavior moralization alone can increase or decrease perceived health risks, despite a lack of scientific support or even evidence to the contrary: the more (im)moral a health behavior, the more/less its associated risk [ 9 , 13 ].…”

“…Despite the above, recent studies recommend using moralization as a persuasion strategy in public health campaigns and health interventions to prevent and combat vaping [ 13 , 53 ]. Attitudes toward vaping have already been moralized in several socio-cultural contexts, where the general public regards it as either moral (when it is perceived as saving the lives of smokers) or immoral (when it is perceived as harmful for children and teenagers) (e.g., [ 4 , 13 , 53 , 54 ]). Currently, the long-term efficiency and safety of electronic cigarettes as a harm-reduction tool for quitting smoking is still debatable, with ongoing systematic reviews investigating these aspects (e.g., [ 55 ]).…”

News events and their relationship with US vape sales: an interrupted time series analysis

“…We note that other factors can influence perceived risks, such as community, peers, word of mouth, advertising and promotion, and legislative regulation. Risk perceptions are associated with health-related behaviors and thus perceptions around vaping may influence use [17,18]. Thus, news events may influence transitions from smoking to vaping, potentially affecting the overall tobacco mortality burden [19].…”