Adolescent and young adult response to fear appeals in anti-smoking messages

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the level of fear experienced by students aged 13 to 30 years, in response to different types of anti-smoking fear appeals. It seeks to extend and validate Quinn et al.'s study by specifically comparing adolescent and young adult responses to fear appeals. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 548 useable questionnaires were collected via a self-administered questionnaire based on established scales. Factor analysis, T tests and ANOVA were used to replicate Quinn et al.'s analysis of the data. Findings – The main results are consistent with previous findings that adolescents and non-smokers experience more fear. Further, general health and factual appeals cause the most fear across all ages but adolescents were more fearful of factual appeals and social ostracism appeals than young adults possibly indicating that factual and social appeals are better targeted at adolescents than young adults. The results were broadly similar to Quinn et al.'s results. Practical implications – Advertisers often use realistic fear appeals to attract the attention of the intended recipient, to scare the recipient into processing the information, and to get them to act in response to the anti-smoking message. However, because adolescents and nonsmokers experience more fear, social marketers, governments, schools and parents need to customise fear appeals to suit these recipients.Originality/value – The current study re-tests and revalidates the effect of these different appeal types amongst adolescents and young adults. The results will help clarify which type of fear appeal causes more fear amongst adolescents and young adults in Australia, 20 years on from Quinn et al.'s study.