Young adult–targeted vaping cessation media campaigns: Promising themes

Abstract

Objective: With the proliferation of vaping in recent years, vaping-related mass media campaigns have been implemented to discourage vaping among youth and young adults. Research on salient vaping-related themes for vaping cessation is lacking. This study aimed to identify promising belief themes for use in young adult-targeted vaping cessation media campaigns. Design, Setting and Method: In 2020, we conducted an online survey of 620 New York residents aged 18 to 35 years who were currently using vape products. We asked respondents about vaping-related beliefs across multiple domains and about their intentions to quit vaping. We assessed endorsement with various belief themes and strength of association between belief themes and intention to quit vaping to identify promising themes for vaping cessation messaging. Results: Most belief themes had moderate endorsement and thus ample room to move. Among dual users and vapers only, themes of harmful ingredients and the health consequences of vaping demonstrated strong promise as themes for message targeting. Among dual users, all but two themes (smoking cessation and harm to others) demonstrated positive, statistically significant associations with intentions to quit vaping and potential percentage to gain scores with confidence intervals that did not overlap with zero. Among vapers only, themes of harmful ingredients and health consequences of vaping had the strongest association with intentions to quit vaping and the highest potential percentage to gain. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that most belief themes have substantial room to move, and that themes of harmful ingredients and health consequences of vaping are particularly promising for vaping cessation campaigns aimed towards dual users and vapers only. Study findings can be used by planners to inform the development and implementation of high-impact media campaigns to promote vaping cessation among young adults.