Characteristics Associated with Young Adults’ Intentions to Engage with Anti-Vaping Instagram Posts

Jessica Liu (), Donghee N. Lee and Elise M. Stevens
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Jessica Liu: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Donghee N. Lee: Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655, USA
Elise M. Stevens: Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655, USA

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to identify behavioral and sociodemographic factors associated with intentions to engage with anti-vaping Instagram posts among a young adult population. This study proposes the following research questions: (1) Does e-cigarette use status influence intentions to engage with anti-vaping Instagram posts?, and (2) How are e-cigarette use and social media use associated? We recruited a convenience sample of young adults (N = 459; aged 18–30 years) in July of 2022 into an online experimental study from Prolific. Participants saw five image-based Instagram posts about the health harms of using e-cigarettes. Participants were then asked about their intentions to engage (“Comment on”, “Reshare”, “DM/Send this to a friend”, “Like”, and/or “Take a screenshot of”) with the posts. We used logistic regression to run adjusted models for each engagement outcome, which included fixed effects for sociodemographics, tobacco use, and social media/internet use. For the sum of the engagement outcome, we used Poisson regression. Total number of social media sites used was associated with intentions to “Like” the posts ( p = 0.025) and the overall engagement score ( p = 0.019), respectively. Daily internet use was associated with intentions to “Comment on” ( p = 0.016) and “Like” ( p = 0.019) the posts. Young adults who reported past 30-day e-cigarette use had higher odds of using Twitter ( p = 0.013) and TikTok ( p < 0.001), and a higher total number of social media sites used ( p = 0.046), compared to young adults who reported never use e-cigarettes. The initial evidence from our exploratory research using a convenience sample suggests that social media campaigns about the harms of e-cigarette use may be an effective way to engage younger audiences, a generation that frequents social media. Efforts to disseminate social media campaigns should consider launching on multiple platforms, such as Twitter and TikTok, and consider e-cigarette use status when posting.

Keywords: e-cigarettes; advertising; social media; Instagram; engagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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