The Influence of the Self-Regulatory Focus on the Effectiveness of Stop-Smoking Campaigns for Young Smokers

People's self-regulatory focus may determine the effectiveness of stop-smoking campaigns. An experiment with 226 young smokers investigated the persuasiveness of different emotional appeals for different self-regulatory foci. A congruency effect emerges for attitude toward the advertisement and behavioral intentions: Young smokers with a promotion focus are more persuaded by sadness-joy than fear-relief campaigns, and the opposite is true for those with a prevention focus. As predicted by the regulatory relevancy principle, ad involvement mediates this effect.