Effectiveness of Anti-Smoking Fear Appeals

This field study addresses three objectives. First, it proposes a conceptual model of smoking attitude and intentions that expands the Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM) with social factors. The research identifies differences between non-smokers and smoking adolescents’ responses to physical and social threat appears. Finally, it evaluates the role of social and physical threats in changing future smoking attitudes and behavioural intentions. This study contributes to the literature by examining adolescents’ self-reported behavioural responses to both physical and social threat appeals as called for in prior research and not previously investigated. The study expands on the EPPM model to include variables from social learning (peer pressure and parental views on smoking) which is a new contribution to the literature. The results indicate that the effects of social threat appeals and social threat appeals are different for some variables tested.