An application of terror management theory in the design of social and health‐related anti‐smoking appeals

• Marketers and public policy makers continue to be plagued with the problem of creating effective communications, which can increase the probability of complying with risk avoidance behavior related to smoking. Using Terror Management Theory (TMT) as a theoretical basis, we provide a rationale as to why traditional anti‐smoking appeals focusing on negative health consequences are not impactful. We use the implications of the theory to predict and show that an appeal focusing on social exclusion should be more motivating than a health appeal to encourage smokers to quit in the short and long run. Specifically, we conduct an experiment designed to investigate the impact of mortality salience and self‐esteem on whether college‐age smokers will comply with anti‐smoking messages. We observe that social exclusion messages compared to health effect messages are particularly effective in reducing intentions to smoke for college‐age smokers who derive their self‐esteem in part from smoking. Overall, our results show that mortality salience interacts with self‐esteem in terms of influencing the probability of smoking in the short run and that social exclusion appeals have a stronger impact than health‐related appeals both in reducing long run smoking intention and emphasizing the salience of health‐related consequences of smoking.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.