Identifying Salient Beliefs Underlying Young Adults' Flavored E-Cigarette Use to Inform Campaign Development: Results...

The tobacco industry's marketing efforts have successfully recruited a new generation of tobacco users, with flavored e-cigarette use becoming increasingly prevalent among young adults (YAs). Media campaigns continue to be an effective and cost-efficient approach to counteract the strong negative influence of marketing. Identifying salient beliefs underlying YAs' flavored e-cigarette use serves as the first step in designing effective anti-vaping campaigns.

An elicitation survey was conducted among 396 YAs (18-25 years; M = 19.66, SD = 1.45) who have ever vaped, with the majority (70.3%) having vaped in the past 6 months. Open-ended questions were used to probe perceptions of flavored e-cigarette use, including benefits, consequences, social norms, facilitators, and barriers of continued use. Thematic analysis was conducted by two coders (α = 0.81-1.00) to identify commonly held and novel beliefs.

The most shared benefits of flavored e-cigarette use included facilitating stress relief and addressing mental health concerns. While participants shared many health-related disadvantages of flavored vaping, including shortness of breath and addiction, our findings illuminate misperceptions and knowledge gaps about the safety of these products. Participants emphasized the influence of marketing on their use of flavored e-cigarettes, as appealing ads on social media were commonly cited as facilitating factors. Our findings also underscore the glorious social perceptions of flavored vaping.

The findings of this study provide a comprehensive list of potential themes for anti-vaping campaigns targeting flavored e-cigarette use among YAs, ranked by prevalence. Novel, salient beliefs generated directly from the target audience provide fresh, innovative angles to fuel prevention efforts.

This study fills an important gap in understanding about YAs' beliefs and perceptions of flavored vaping products. Our findings reveal salient and novel attitudinal, normative, and control beliefs about flavored vaping. These beliefs will serve as a springboard for inspiring effective campaigns that seek to change YAs' beliefs and to subsequently curb their flavored vaping behavior.