Anti-smoking websites as a persuasive technology: attitudes toward the web sites of profit and nonprofit organizations

In our age, information and communication technologies are effectively used in persuasion attempts that are applied for influencing attitudes and behaviors of individuals. Web sites, where people have opportunity to visit via internet, have a place in information and communication technologies. Web sites come into prominence in information age as a functional mean for having effect on attitudes of individuals in both commercial and social topics. In this context, also in struggling with cigarette, one of important problems of our age, web sites are inevitably used. In this study, perceived credibility and attitude of individuals, who visited an anti-smoking web site, examined with an experimental study in the context of cigarette smoking habit of participants and whether web site seeks profit or not. With two way analysis of variance, that was used in research in which 2 x 2 (habit of cigarette smoking x owner of web site) experimental design was used, attitudes of participants toward the website and over perceived source credibility from web sites, effects of whether owner of web site seek profit or not and cigarette smoking habit of participant were examined.