finatics

2014

The Effectiveness of Antismoking campaigns in
India

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
GROUP 8
NAVIN THOMAS MATTHEW

PGP29117

PRASHANT NAGPAL

PGP29158

RUCHI WAGHMARE

PGP29159

MASHANTHA VISWANATHAN

PGP29176

HITESH KAKRANI

PGP29376

The Effectiveness of Anti-Smoking Campaigns in India

To Study the Effectiveness of Anti-Smoking
Campaigns in India
Motivation
Tobacco is the single biggest cause of preventable death in the world. Smoking tobacco leads to diseases that can affect the liver, lungs and heart. Smoking is also a leading cause of cancer. An estimated 5 million deaths every year are caused due to smoking (WHO, 2006). Despite being a well-known cause of death, smoking still remains prevalent across the world, with close to a billion smokers worldwide.
For decades, governments and NGOs across the world have tried to counteract this by pumping millions of dollars every year into anti-smoking campaigns, primarily directed at people under 30. In 2005, for instance, $500 million was spent on tobacco use prevention in the US (Zhao & Pechmann, 2007). Part of this is due to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global treaty on tobacco, which mandates educational and public awareness programmes on the advantages of no-smoking lifestyles and the health risks of smoking.
Yet, despite their long-standing history, the effectiveness of these campaigns remains dubious, at best.
This is driven primarily by the fact that the number of smokers has increased significantly since the 80s.
In India, for instance, the number of smokers has increased to 110 million in 2012 from 74.5 million in
1980 (Freeman, Fleming & Robinson; IHME 2014).
The trend of consumer smoking has also led researchers to argue that anti-smoking advertising and education do not have any noticeable effect on smoking behaviour (Bardsley & Olekalns, 1999). Despite this, ad spends on anti-smoking campaigns continue to increase, with studies also claiming that such campaigns have led to increased odds of smokers quitting in 14 countries (Morbidity & Mortality Weekly
Report – Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, USA).
The degree to which these messages are received and internalised by audiences undoubtedly depend on two major factors: message characteristics and viewer characteristics. Message characteristics would primarily relate to the message frame, where some may argue that a positive frame encourages users to quit smoking whereas a negative frame may prevent more people from taking up the habit.

Purpose
With the health issues caused by smoking well-known and advertised, it is alarming that such efforts might not lead to any change in behaviour of current and future consumers of cigarettes. The group therefore wishes to study the effectiveness of these ad campaigns from an Indian perspective, and attempt to identify the communication that may lead to increasing conative effects of these ads.

Objectives
1. To study the impact of anti-smoking campaigns in India on individuals below 30 years of age.
2. To compare the impact of different message characteristics on the target group.
3. To compare the impact of the same message characteristic across multiple viewer characteristics
CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR | GROUP 8

The Effectiveness of Anti-Smoking Campaigns in India
4. To identify message characteristics that lead to increased effectiveness of anti-smoking campaigns among TG.

Research Questions
1. How is perception of anti-smoking communication different between smokers and non-smokers?
2. What construct best explains public reception of anti-smoking communication?
3. What message characteristics lead to highest intent of non-smoking behaviour?

Communication of Health Effects
Over the years, psychologists have come up with various constructs that try to explain how people process information related to activities that affect health adversely. These constructs are then used to devise communication that encourage receivers to modify their behaviour for their own well-being.
Most of these theories advocate using a fear appeal as the most effective means for making conative changes. These are called Risk Learning Models, as the message here typically focuses on teaching the receiver new information related to health risks and behaviour that minimizes these risks. For the purpose of this project, we shall be considering two such theories: the Protection Motivation Theory, and the
Health Belief Model. We shall also consider another construct, called the Stereotype Priming Model, which takes an alternative approach to health communications.

Protection Motivation Theory
The Protection Motivation Theory was proposed in order to explain why fear appeals work in health communication. According to this theory, in order to maximize behavioural intent of receivers, a message should focus on increasing the following among recipients:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Perceived Severity of the Threatening Event
Perceived Probability of Occurrence
Efficacy of Recommended Protective Behaviour
Perceived Self-Efficacy

Therefore, if a person exposed to communication that he deems is (1) Serious, (2) Likely to Happen, (3)
One that he can be protected from, and (4) One where he can protect himself, then the communication would be most effective.

Health Belief Model
The Health Belief Model is one of the most widely used models to explain health-related behaviours among people. The Health Belief model also justifies the use of fear appeals. I claims that people tend to avoid risky behaviour (Behaviour that leads to health risks), provided they understand:
1. Severity of the Risk
2. Their Susceptibility to the Risk
3. Benefits of advocated behaviour
While these points sound similar to PMT, the Health Belief model also adds two necessary conditions for behavioural intent to occur:
1. There should be no behavioural barriers
CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR | GROUP 8

The Effectiveness of Anti-Smoking Campaigns in India
2. The receiver must be provided with internal/external cues

Terror Management Theory
Terror Management Theory is a concept that arises out of the inherent paradox of existence: the desire to live with the knowledge of mortality. Self-esteem is a fundamental part of this theory, as it states that culture and the need for self-esteem is what drives humans to ignore the terror that this realisation would otherwise pose. According to this theory,
1. To make the receiver’s mortality salient (immediately obvious)
2. To cue the receiver with threat-avoidance outcomes and desired behaviour
What is needed in this approach is the receiver’s relevance of the desired behaviour for his/her selfesteem.

Stereotype Priming Model
The Stereotype Priming Model takes a different approach to the above two models (sometimes named the Risk-Learning Models). The Stereotype Priming Model states that people will act upon health communication only if they are able to relate to the concept from a construct that is easily accessible to them in their memory. Therefore, in order to encourage behaviour, the communication needs to:
1. Give cues that the receiver can relate to (Prime the receiver)
2. The cues must be relatable to easily accessible constructs (Stereotypes)
3. The stereotypes must enforce the message upon the receiver
According to this model, the simpler the construct, the more relatable it is, and the higher the recall it will generate. Research Design
The Target Group for this study are young adults, in the age group 18-30, who may or may not currently smoke. Among these, the TG shall be segmented as ‘Regular Smokers’, who smoke at least one cigarette per day, ‘Occasional Smokers’, who have smoked a cigarette at least once in the previous two months, and ‘Non Smokers’, who have not smoked a cigarette during this period.
The TG shall be exposed to advertisements that discourage smoking or encourage non-smoking. Followed by this exposure, the viewer shall be interviewed to identify the impact of the advertisement on him/her.
Specifically, the study aims to gauge behavioural intent with respect to the viewer’s willingness to adopt/further continue smoking. The interviews conducted shall be unstructured, so that the user can themselves express their reaction to the copy.
Anti-smoking communications can be classified over various criteria, judging by different tactics used by agencies to instil non-smoking behaviour among message receivers. Since the intent of the study is to identify what construct best explains consumer behaviour when it comes to not smoking, the first step is to identify various anti-smoking communications that cover different tactics. Each of these shall then be analysed from two perspectives:
1. Viewer reaction to these communications
2. Theoretical fit of communication with respect to the four theories described above

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR | GROUP 8

The Effectiveness of Anti-Smoking Campaigns in India
With these two perspectives, the study aims to identify which message tactics and theories are most successful in encouraging anti-smoking behaviour, and recommend the positioning anti-smoking advertisements should take, depending on the intended target.

Message Characteristics




Extent of Fear Appeal – Low v/s High
Framing – Positive v/s Negative
Referencing – Third-Person v/s Second-Person

Viewer Characteristics


Regular Smoker v/s Occasional Smoker v/s Non-Smoker

Methodology
Members of the TG shall be selected using Convenience Sampling, and exposed to one advertisement each. Behavioural Intent shall be measured as Intent Intensity, measured on an interval scale of 1-5, where 1 implies minimal intent to quit, and 5 implies imminent intent to quit.

Analysis
The data shall be analysed using 2-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), to identify if there are any significant differences between groups for both parameters (message characteristics and viewer characteristics). The
Hypotheses for testing are:
H0: All segments of TG have similar behavioural intent on response to all message characteristics
H1: Behavioural intent of TG varies across message characteristics
H2: Behavioural intent of TG varies across viewer characteristics
The Hypotheses shall be tested at 5% level of significance for making conclusions.

Sample Size
Since the technique used is ANOVA, the sample size is determined by the size of the cell. Here:
Number of Message Characteristics – 3
Number of Viewer Characteristics – 3
Minimum Cell Size – 5
Sample Size – 3*3*5 = 45
Therefore, a minimum sample size of 45 is necessary for using the above methodology.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR | GROUP 8