{
  "abstract": "Background Pairing e-cigarettes with healthy lifestyle contexts in influencers’ promotional social media posts may increase e-cigarette use risk among young adults. This study examined the effects of e-cigarette and healthy lifestyle content on young adults’ perceptions of influencer credibility, harm perceptions of, and susceptibility to use, e-cigarettes.Methods In this survey-based online, repeated-measures experiment (2023), California young adults (N=1494, M age=23 (SD=1.8); 63% female, 51% Hispanic) were randomly shown 10 (total) Instagram and TikTok videos, featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities (experimental group), or a healthy lifestyle activity alone (control). After watching each video, participants rated perceived influencer credibility (eg, honesty). After watching all videos, harm perceptions of e-cigarettes were assessed among all participants and susceptibility to e-cigarette use was assessed among e-cigarette never-users. Harm perceptions and susceptibility outcomes were compared between groups (experimental vs control) and between participants who perceived influencers as credible versus non-credible, using binomial generalised linear mixed effects models.Results Participants in the experimental group were more likely to report lower harm perceptions (adjusted OR (AOR) 1.12; 95% CI 1.03; 1.21) and higher susceptibility to e-cigarette use (AOR 1.22, 95% CI 1.11; 1.34), than participants in the control condition. Similar results were found when influencers were perceived as credible, but not when they were perceived as non-credible.Conclusions Social media influencers’ posts promoting e-cigarette use along with healthy activities may contribute to young adult e-cigarette use. Decreasing perceived credibility of influencers could decrease the negative effects of their promotional posts.Trial registration number NCT06433466.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Julia Vassey"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "TSET Health Promotion Research Center, The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Erin A Vogel"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Jennifer B Unger"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Junhan Cho"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Dayoung Bae"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Division of General Internal Medicine, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Scott I Donaldson"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Division of General Internal Medicine, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA",
        "Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy, Rutgers School of Public Health, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA",
        "Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, Newark, New Jersey, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Jon-Patrick Allem"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Impact of Instagram and TikTok influencer marketing on perceptions of e-cigarettes and perceptions of influencers in young adults: a randomised survey-based experiment",
  "uid": "e3281afa-5a92-594e-8f95-1fbb14a217e4"
}