Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

Avoidance of cigarette pack health warnings among regular cigarette smokers

Maynard, Olivia M., Attwood, Angela, O'Brien, Laura, Brooks, Sabrina, Hedge, Craig ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6145-3319, Leonards, Ute and Munafò, Marcus R. 2014. Avoidance of cigarette pack health warnings among regular cigarette smokers. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 136 , pp. 170-174. 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.01.001

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Background Previous research with adults and adolescents indicates that plain cigarette packs increase visual attention to health warnings among non-smokers and non-regular smokers, but not among regular smokers. This may be because regular smokers: (1) are familiar with the health warnings, (2) preferentially attend to branding, or (3) actively avoid health warnings. We sought to distinguish between these explanations using eye-tracking technology. Method A convenience sample of 30 adult dependent smokers participated in an eye-tracking study. Participants viewed branded, plain and blank packs of cigarettes with familiar and unfamiliar health warnings. The number of fixations to health warnings and branding on the different pack types were recorded. Results Analysis of variance indicated that regular smokers were biased towards fixating the branding rather than the health warning on all three pack types. This bias was smaller, but still evident, for blank packs, where smokers preferentially attended the blank region over the health warnings. Time-course analysis showed that for branded and plain packs, attention was preferentially directed to the branding location for the entire 10 s of the stimulus presentation, while for blank packs this occurred for the last 8 s of the stimulus presentation. Familiarity with health warnings had no effect on eye gaze location. Conclusion Smokers actively avoid cigarette pack health warnings, and this remains the case even in the absence of salient branding information. Smokers may have learned to divert their attention away from cigarette pack health warnings. These findings have implications for cigarette packaging and health warning policy.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Psychology
Subjects: R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Uncontrolled Keywords: Health warnings; Plain packaging; Smoking; Adult smokers; Eye-tracking
Publisher: Elsevier
ISSN: 0376-8716
Last Modified: 28 Oct 2022 09:39
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/75215

Citation Data

Cited 56 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item