Wackowski Olivia A, Gratale Stefanie K, Rashid Mariam T, Greene Kathryn, O'Connor Richard J
Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies, Rutgers University, 303 George Street, Suite 500, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
Department of Communication, School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, 4 Huntington Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
Prev Med Rep. 2021 Oct 19;24:101608. doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2021.101608. eCollection 2021 Dec.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has developed a regulatory process by which tobacco companies can apply to make "modified risk tobacco product" (MRTP) marketing claims that their product poses a lower risk of disease or exposure to harmful constituents. The impact of MRTP claims to promote harm reduction may be limited by perceptions that claims come from the tobacco industry, lack of attention, and the simultaneous presence of health warnings on ads, which may be perceived as conflicting information. Some studies have examined the potential of alternative "modified risk warnings". We aimed to contribute to this literature by exploring issues of claim attention, perceived source and credibility when viewing MRTP claims within or outside of a warning label. We conducted 11 focus groups with adult smokers and young adult (ages 18-25) non-smokers (n = 54) who viewed three e-cigarette or snus advertisements which varied in where an MRTP message was placed: outside the warning label, inside the warning label, or in a modified label style. Results suggest that MRTP claims presented within or in the style of a warning label (compared to claims outside the label), may be perceived as coming from a government or health-related source rather than a tobacco industry, and thus seem more credible. Yet these formats may receive insufficient message attention, as they are smaller and appear as part of labels consumers are accustomed to ignoring. Future research should further probe effects of MRTP statements and how they vary by message source, channel and format.
美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）制定了一项监管程序，烟草公司可据此申请做出“降低风险烟草产品”（MRTP）的营销声明，称其产品导致疾病或接触有害成分的风险较低。MRTP声明对促进减少危害的影响可能受到多种因素限制，比如人们认为这些声明来自烟草行业、缺乏关注，以及广告中同时出现的健康警示，这可能被视为相互矛盾的信息。一些研究探讨了替代性“降低风险警示”的潜力。我们旨在通过研究在警示标签内外查看MRTP声明时的声明关注度、感知来源和可信度等问题，为这一领域的文献做出贡献。我们对成年吸烟者和18至25岁的青年非吸烟者（n = 54）进行了11次焦点小组访谈，他们观看了三则电子烟或口含烟广告，这些广告中MRTP信息的位置各不相同：在警示标签之外、在警示标签之内，或采用修改后的标签样式。结果表明，与标签之外的声明相比，在警示标签之内或以警示标签样式呈现的MRTP声明，可能会被认为来自政府或与健康相关的来源，而非烟草行业，因此看起来更可信。然而，这些形式可能没有得到足够的信息关注，因为它们较小，且是消费者习惯忽略的标签的一部分。未来的研究应进一步探究MRTP声明的效果，以及它们如何因信息来源、渠道和形式的不同而有所变化。
