Graphic Health Warnings on Cigarette Packages: Adolescents’ Emotive Reaction toward Smoking

Abstract

This study aims to identify the prominent role of graphic health warnings on cigarette packets due to mediating evoked fear in impelling smoking considerations and behavior. The quantitatively designed study deployed a probability (simple random) sampling technique to collect the sample size (Yamane method) of 384 adolescents (smokers or non-smokers) living in the Abbottabad district of Pakistan. The study implemented the Hayes Process model for statistical examining the gathered data in SPSS 20. The empirical findings of the study depicted that perceived visibility of the graphic health warning threats has a positive impact in raising evoking emotions (fear, guilt, disgust), while perceived visibility significantly impacts the emotions (fear, guilt, disgust) of adolescents who smoke. Moreover, smoking status moderates the effects of guilty on the personal consideration of smoking. The results indicated the complete mediation for the indirect effect of the independent variable (perceived visibility) through mediators (fear, guilt, disgust) on dependent variables, i.e., personal and other people's attitudes toward smoking and beliefs about secondhand smoke. The novel empirical findings of the study revealed that adolescents who smoke have a higher level of fear and guilt than non-smokers. The study recommends using graphic warnings about the dangers of smoking to efficiently stimulate emotions in adolescents to manage adult smoking behavior.