Published on
Updated
Reading 1 min.
According to a study, the anti-smoking campaigns that have the highest engagement rate are those presenting the risks of passive smoking on pets.
To encourage a person to quit smoking, do you think that talking to him about the damage of tobacco on his health is the best way? Based on the results of this study, it would seem not.
Anti-smoking campaigns: Facebook messages analyzed
In this work, the authors have chosen to analyze the factors that influence the effectiveness of anti-smoking campaigns on Facebook and user engagement. For this, they collected 3,515 posts and 28,125 associated comments from seven major national and local anti-tobacco campaigns on Facebook between 2018 and 2021, which they carefully studied.
After analysis, the researchers found that large government and non-profit organizations (NGO) campaigns generated more engagement than smaller local campaigns.
What types of messages are most effective in quitting smoking?
In general, the most popular campaign messages tended to be informative: key phrases referring to “harmful chemicals“. Similarly, negative messages generated more engagement with Facebook users. Conversely, anti-tobacco campaigns geared towards positive messages generated more negative comments.
Another key element of this study, anti-smoking campaigns evoking the risks associated with passive smoking are widely consulted, especially if this risk affects pets!
“Our results show that people respond to messages about how smoking negatively affects the lives of those they love, including pets. Messages that are personally meaningful to smokers can help generate positive behavioral changes in smokers.” explains Dr. Xue, principal investigator of this work. “Anti-tobacco campaigns can use these results to improve their messages, better engage the public and more effectively promote reasons to quit smoking.” he concludes.