NCT06433466

Influencer Marketing: a Survey-based Experiment

The Impact of Instagram and TikTok Influencer Marketing on Perceptions of E-cigarettes in Young Adults: a Survey-based Experiment

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 1,500 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Southern California · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 24 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Young adults (N = 1,500) will participate in the online survey-based experiment. They will be randomly shown 10 videos, featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities (experimental group), or a healthy lifestyle activity alone (control). After watching each video, participants will rate perceptions of influencer credibility (i.e., honesty, trustworthiness, knowledge, attractiveness, intelligence, and popularity) on the scale of 0 (e.g., dishonest) to 100 (honest). Among all participants, harm perceptions of e-cigarettes will be assessed. Susceptibility to use e-cigarettes will be assessed among never users. These outcomes will then be compared among participants who perceived influencers as credible and those who perceived influencers as non-credible.

Detailed description

Young adults (18-24 years of age) living in California were recruited by YouGov marketing research panel to participate in a survey on tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors. YouGov, a research panel agency, has been used in prior research to survey young adults about their tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors. Respondents (N=1,500) were matched to a sampling frame based on gender, age, race, and education. The sampling frame was a politically representative modeled frame of United States (U.S.) adults based on the American Community Survey. The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using a propensity score matching procedure. Participants were provided with a survey URL link. After completing informed consent, participants completed the survey online. The study was approved by the University of Southern California Institutional Review Board (UP-21-00135). Respondents were randomly assigned to watch 10 10-second long TikTok videos in either experimental (influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities ) or control group (influencers showing healthy lifestyle activity alone).

Conditions

• Vaping

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Videos featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities	Young adults were randomly shown 10 videos, featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities (experimental group), or a healthy lifestyle activity alone (control).

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-05-01
• Primary completion: 2023-06-30
• Completion: 2023-06-30
• First posted: 2024-05-29
• Last updated: 2024-05-29

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States