Greenwashed Cigarette Ad Text and Imagery Produce Inaccurate Harm, Addictiveness, and Nicotine Content Perceptions: Results from a Randomized Online Experiment.

Autor:	Moran MB; Department of Health, Behavior & Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Baltimore, MD., Ibrahim M; Department of Health, Behavior & Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Baltimore, MD., Czaplicki L; Department of Health, Behavior & Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Baltimore, MD.; Institute of Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2213 McElderry St., Baltimore, MD., Pearson J; Department of Health Behavior, Policy, and Administration Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Nevada-Reno, 1664 N. Virginia Street, Reno, NV., Thrul J; Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Baltimore, MD., Lindblom E; O'Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law, Georgetown University Law Center, 600 New Jersey Avenue, NW Washington, DC., Robinson-Mosley S; Department of Health, Behavior & Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Baltimore, MD., Kennedy RD; Department of Health, Behavior & Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Baltimore, MD.; Institute of Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2213 McElderry St., Baltimore, MD., Balaban A; Department of Behavioral & Community Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, 4200 Valley Dr., Ste. 2242, College Park, MD., Johnson M; Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 5510 Nathan Shock Dr., Baltimore, MD.
Jazyk:	angličtina
Zdroj:	Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco [Nicotine Tob Res] 2024 Aug 22. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Aug 22.
DOI:	10.1093/ntr/ntae200
Abstrakt:	Introduction: The tobacco industry has a long history of circumventing regulations to present their products, inaccurately, as less harmful. Greenwashing (portraying a product as natural/eco-friendly) is increasingly used by tobacco companies and may mislead consumers to believe that certain cigarettes are less harmful than others. This study assesses the effect of some common greenwashing tactics on consumer product perceptions. Methods: We conducted an online experiment with 1,504 participants ages 18-29, randomized to view a cigarette ad manipulated for presence/absence of a combination of 4 different greenwashing techniques: greenwashed ad text, greenwashed ad imagery, recycled paper ad background, and image of greenwashed cigarette pack. Participants rated perceived absolute harm, relative harm to other cigarettes, absolute addictiveness, relative addictiveness, and relative nicotine content. Results: Participants who viewed ads containing greenwashed text were more likely to have inaccurate perceptions about absolute harm (AOR=1.72), relative harm (AOR=3.92), relative addictiveness (AOR=2.93) and nicotine content (AOR=2.08). Participants who viewed ads containing greenwashed imagery were more likely to have inaccurate perceptions of relative harm (AOR=1.55), absolute addictiveness (AOR=1.72), relative addictiveness (AOR=1.60) and nicotine content (AOR=1.48). Forty-two percent of those who saw an ad with all greenwashed features believed the product was less harmful than other cigarettes vs. 2% of those who saw an ad without greenwashed features. Conclusions: We found greenwashed text and imagery produced inaccurate risk perceptions. More active U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) enforcement against such greenwashing and new FDA rulemaking to prohibit unnecessary imagery in tobacco advertising and establish plain packaging requirements would help protect consumers and public health. Implications: These findings provide evidence that greenwashing tactics used by the tobacco industry increase inaccurate product risk perceptions. These tactics could be a way for the industry to make implicit modified risk claims, despite applicable U.S. Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act prohibitions. Findings from this study support the need for prohibitions on these tactics, and the potential for such prohibitions to help protect public health. (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.)
Databáze:	MEDLINE
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