Differences in Presenting Health Warning Labels on Hookah Venue Menus Between Immersive Virtual Reality and Online...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Behavioral Science
• Health Communication

Background:

• Virtual reality (VR) and online surveys offer distinct environments for message testing.
• Assessing the impact of health warning labels (HWLs) on hookah menus requires understanding platform-specific effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the effectiveness of health warning labels (HWLs) on hookah menus across virtual reality (VR) and online survey settings.
• To determine if message-testing platforms influence the perceived impact of HWLs on attitudes and beliefs about hookah.

Main Methods:

• Conducted separate studies in VR (n=96) and online survey (n=213) settings.
• Randomly assigned participants to view hookah menus with or without HWLs.
• Utilized propensity score weighting for secondary data analysis to account for demographic differences between study settings.

Main Results:

• Significant differences were observed in the effects of HWLs between VR and online survey settings on perceptions of hookah's absolute and relative harm and addictiveness.
• The online survey setting yielded smaller p-values, suggesting a greater impact of HWLs on attitudes and beliefs compared to the VR setting.

Conclusions:

• This is the first study directly comparing hookah HWL effects across VR and online survey message-testing platforms.
• The effectiveness of HWLs on attitudes and beliefs may be moderated by the message-testing platform used.
• Further real-world research is needed to validate findings and determine the optimal platform for assessing HWL effectiveness.