Effects of E-cigarette Advertising Messages and Cues on Cessation Outcomes

We examined effects of e-cigarette ad messages and visual cues on outcomes related to combustible cigarette smoking cessation: smoking cessation intention, smoking urges, and immediate smoking behavior.

US adult smokers (N = 3293) were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to condition in a 3 (message: e-cigarette use anywhere, harm reduction, control) × 2 (e-cigarette cue presence or absence) between-subjects experiment. Stimuli were print ads for cigarette-like e-cigarettes ("cigalikes") that were manipulated for the experimental conditions. We conducted ANOVA and logistic regression analyses to investigate effects of the manipulations.

Message effects on cessation intention and smoking urges were not statistically significant. There was no evidence of cue effects or message × cue interactions across outcomes. Contrary to expectations, e-cigarette use anywhere and harm reduction messages were associated with lower odds of immediate smoking than the control message (AOR_EUA = 0.75, 95%CI = 0.58, 0.97, p = .026; AOR_HR = 0.72, 95%CI = 0.55, 0.93, p = .013).

E-cigarette use anywhere and harm reduction messages may encourage smoking cessation, given the observed reduction in immediate smoking. E-cigarette cues may not influence smoking cessation outcomes. Future studies should investigate whether message effects are a result of smokers believing e-cigarettes to be effective cessation aids.