An Exploration of Narrative and Dynamic Norm Messages for Discouraging Vaping Among Young Adults

The high prevalence of vaping among young adults is a public health crisis. Both narratives and social norms are commonly used communication strategies for health promotion and disease prevention, providing potential means to discourage vaping. This study examined the effects of narrative and social norm messages to communicate vaping to young adults.

Participants (N = 528) were randomly assigned to one of five conditions in a 2 (narrative: narrative, non-narrative) X 2 (social norm: dynamic norm, static norm) + 1 no-message control between-subjects experiment.

Participants in the narrative (vs. non-narrative) condition reported lower freedom threat, fewer negative cognitions, and lower message believability. There was a favorable indirect effect of narrative on attitude as mediated by freedom threat and reactance. No significant main effect of dynamic (vs. static) norm was found; however, results showed some additive effects when combining narrative and dynamic norms.

Narratives reduced resistance to anti-vaping messages and impacted vaping attitude indirectly, suggesting their effectiveness in anti-vaping communication. Narrative persuasiveness was further strengthened when used together with dynamic norms. Findings provide implications for efforts aimed at discouraging vaping and suggest several possibilities for future work in the domain of narrative persuasion and social norm messaging.