NCT06501937

Influencer Marketing: a Survey-based Experiment Among Adolescents

The Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Imagery Alongside E-cigarettes in Social Media Influencer Marketing on Perceptions of E-cigarettes Among Adolescents: a Survey-based Experiment

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 664 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Southern California · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 13 Years – 17 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Adolescents (N = 664) participated in the online survey-based experiment. They were randomly shown 10 videos, featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities (experimental group), or e-cigarette promotion alone (control). After watching each video, participants rated perceptions of influencer credibility (i.e., honesty, trustworthiness, knowledge) on the scale of 0 (e.g., dishonest) to 100 (honest). Among all participants, harm perceptions and appeal of e-cigarettes was assessed. Susceptibility to use e-cigarettes was assessed among never users of e-cigarettes. These outcomes were then compared among participants who perceived influencers as credible and those who perceived influencers as non-credible.

Detailed description

Adolescents (13-17 years of age) living in California were recruited by Qualtrics marketing research panel to participate in a survey on tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors. Qualtrics, a research panel agency, has been used in prior research to survey adolescents about their tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors. 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-21-00352). 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 promoting e-cigarettes alone).

Conditions

• Vaping

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Influencer marketing	Participants watched online survey-imbedded promotional videos featuring influencers

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-02-12
• Primary completion: 2024-02-29
• Completion: 2024-02-29
• First posted: 2024-07-15
• Last updated: 2024-07-15

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States