E-cigarette Social Media Marketing and Its Perceptions by Youth

Evolution of Influencer-driven E-cigarette Marketing on Social Media and Its Effect on E-cigarette Perceptions and Use Patterns Among Adolescents

The proposed study will conduct two randomized between-subject experiments among 6,000 adolescents (per each experiment) recruited nationwide to test the effects of audio-visual features of e-cigarette influencer marketing on perceptions of influencer credibility, e-cigarette harm perceptions, appeal, and susceptibility to e-cigarette use. This protocol represent the first experiment.

We will estimate the effects of visual features often used in e-cigarette influencer marketing on social media on perceptions of influencer credibility, harm perceptions, appeal and susceptibility to e-cigarette use among adolescents. We will assess interaction of the perceived age of influencers (young-looking vs older-looking) with the following features of influencer marketing, using two survey-based experiments: Experiment 1 will assess the effects of theme or social context appeal, i.e., use of generally positively perceived lifestyle contexts (e.g., healthy lifestyle, entertainment) alongside e-cigarette marketing.

Inclusion Criteria:

• 14-17 years of age,
• English fluency,

Exclusion Criteria:

Not meeting the following criteria:

• 14-17 years of age,
• English fluency,