Dr. Merlyn Griffiths (Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality, and Tourism) received a continuation of funding from Duke University for the project “Exploring Reactions to Health Warnings on Waterpipe Tobacco Ads.”
Waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS) is becoming widespread in the United States among young adults. Increases in WTS are partly due to advertisements that entice young adults to engage in WTS. These ads include waterpipe products (e.g., themes of flavored tobacco and waterpipe apparatus) and social allure ads promoted by waterpipe bars, cafés, and lounges. The latter instill and reinforce young adults’ views of WTS as a fun social activity by emphasizing social interactions embedded within relaxing or festive surroundings with food, music, and dance. These social allure ads contain enticing themes (e.g., eroticism, exoticism, social acceptance, and occasion appropriate) to capture attention, persuade and encourage patronage at these locations; they may also spur young adults to engage in WTS socially at homes and at parties.
Often devoid of health warnings, waterpipe product and social allure ads likely mislead young adults to believe WTS is safe, promoting experimentation with WTS and reducing the desire to quit among users, the abstract notes. Thus, as shown with cigarette health warnings, designing effective verbal and graphic health warnings is vital to curbing the effects of these ads. For these reasons, the researchers propose to explore the efficacy of varied health warnings (verbal only vs. verbal plus graphic warnings) to decrease ad appeal on desire to engage in WTS and examine potential cognitive and emotional mediators, such as perceived risks of WTS and attitudes toward WTS. This study will be the first to examine these outcomes among young adults who engage in WTS and susceptible nonusers, two populations of high interest to regulators and the public health community.
