Effect of e-cigarette advertisement exposure on intention to use e-cigarettes in adolescents

Introduction: With the growth of electronic cigarettes use, curiosity about and experimentation with these products has increased among adolescents. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the moderating effect of e-cigarette advertisement (ad) exposure on the relation between perceptions of use and intentions to use in youth. Methods: Multiple regression analyses utilizing data from the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey (N = 17,286) were used to evaluate the effect of ad exposure, perceived harmfulness, barriers, and benefits of e-cigarette use on intentions to use among youth who had never used e-cigarettes. Results: Models for non-smokers accounted for 15.5% of the variance in intention to use (R² = 0.155, F (15) = 187.0, p < 0.001). Results demonstrate that an increase in the number of exposures to e-cigarette ads was associated with an increase in intent to use (b = 0.039, t = 7.4, p < 0.001). Models also demonstrated significant interactions between ad exposure and perceptions of use on future intention to use. For smokers, models explained 11.1% of the variance in intention to use (R² = 0.111, F (15) = 3.1, p < 0.001). Ad exposure had a non-significant effect on intention to use e-cigarettes (b = −0.010, t = −0.2, p = 0.859). In smokers, ad exposure did not significantly affect the association between perceptions of use and intention to use. Conclusions: Ads are most effective at attracting non-smoking youth as new users rather than promoting product switching in young cigarette smokers.