Teenagers’ response to self- and other-directed antismoking messages: a cross-cultural study

While the de-marketing of smoking among teenagers has received wide attention in the literature, few have examined the issue of whether messages should be uniform across cultures. Globally, the vast majority of anti-smoking messages are based on fear appeals to the negative effects on the (potential) smoker him/herself. This research suggests that such a global strategy may be suboptimal. Specifically, while ads portraying the negative consequences of smoking to oneself may work for teens from individualist cultures, they are less effective in collectivist cultures. In contrast, messages orientated towards the adverse effects on other people are more effective in collectivist environments. Given the astronomical amounts spent on anti-tobacco advertising, this finding offers significant advantages for creating effective anti-smoking messages.