Threatening Messages, Risk Perception and the Intention of Smoking Cessation. the Case of Student Smokers at Athens Panteion University

Abstract

AbstractA plethora of campaigns focuses on communicative practices, such as the use of public warnings in the form of advertisements, with the aim of informing smokers about the potential risks of starting and maintaining smoking. Conducted researches have shown the effectiveness of such campaigns on smoking cessation. The present survey examines the influence of threatening messages given to 150 smokers, who are students of Athens Panteion University, aged between 18 and 28, by estimating subjective risk perception, the intention to quit smoking within 30 days and within 6 months, and the disengagement beliefs. The participants were separated in two groups, the control group and the experimental group, in which they received a threatening message, and subsequently completed the questionnaire. The results indicated that smokers in the experimental group had higher subjective risk perception. In specific, those who were in the later stages of changing behaviour appeared to have a higher intention to quit smoking. The smokers' high adherence to disengagement beliefs reduced the risk perception, but there is a correlation between disengagement beliefs and groups related to this variable. The results suggest that threatening messages are an effective strategy for preventing and motivating people to quit smoking.Keywords: Sociology of health, risk perception, medical information, health campaigns.IntroductionHealth campaigns usually attempt to boost conscious-raising and motivation in order to change unhealthy behaviour patterns by issuing them with health warnings. This communicative attempt mostly pertains to exposing to fear and threatening messages, thus increasing smokers' subjective perception that something bad will happen (risk perception) and motivating them in adopting healthy behaviours, preventing themselves from future health risks (Lipksus, 2007: 696-713).It is also argued that the subjective experience of being at risk is conducive to altering smokers' health identities, especially in conditions that their vulnerability to health diseases has been statistically measured before (Gillespie, 2012: 194-207). It is noticeable that our analytical focus on behaviour and experience energetically synthesizes sociological and psychological concerns on a highly interdisciplinary research basis.In health sociology literature, the increase of smokers' risk perception and vulnerability can be arguably achieved by taking advantage of different types of threatening messages. Specifically, there is considerable evidence that graphic advertisements about the negative impact of smoking are effective and suitable in low and middle income countries, whilst media campaigns affect more economically advantaged populations (see for example Durkin et al., 2013; Niederdeppe et al., 2008).Last but not least, another course of action taken by various health campaigns is the increasing depiction of tobacco industry's action as seriously deceitful and exploitative (see Thrasher et al., 2006). This significantly conduces to preventing adolescents' smoking and raising highly their levels of concern, even on health risks regarded as being of less importance (Mart, 2012: 87-97).Actively cutting across disciplinary boundaries, the current sociological study uses (a) the Transtheoretical Model to carefully examine the effects of the stages of change and of the reception of threatening messages on risk perception and the intention of the smoking cessation, (b) the Health Action Process Approach Model (HAPA) to investigate the factors that intervene and increase the motives and intention, leading to action, and (c) the disengagement beliefs for the examination the (low or high) adherence to them, after the received warning message.Risk and Addiction in the Sociology of HealthOver the recent years, many sociological attempts have been made in order to define and describe the term risk, which, within contemporary culture, is a ubiquitous issue being stretched over a wide range of social activities and practices, such as national security, terrorism, food, smoking, drugs, safety, and so on. …