Influencer Marketing: a Survey-based Experiment

University of Southern California

Status: Completed

Conditions: Vaping

Treatments: Other: Videos featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06433466

unidentified

Details and patient eligibility

About

Young adults (N = 1,500) will participate in the online survey-based experiment. They will be randomly shown 10 videos, featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities (experimental group), or a healthy lifestyle activity alone (control). After watching each video, participants will rate perceptions of influencer credibility (i.e., honesty, trustworthiness, knowledge, attractiveness, intelligence, and popularity) on the scale of 0 (e.g., dishonest) to 100 (honest).

Among all participants, harm perceptions of e-cigarettes will be assessed. Susceptibility to use e-cigarettes will be assessed among never users. These outcomes will then be compared among participants who perceived influencers as credible and those who perceived influencers as non-credible.

Full description

Young adults (18-24 years of age) living in California were recruited by YouGov marketing research panel to participate in a survey on tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors. YouGov, a research panel agency, has been used in prior research to survey young adults about their tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors. Respondents (N=1,500) were matched to a sampling frame based on gender, age, race, and education. The sampling frame was a politically representative modeled frame of United States (U.S.) adults based on the American Community Survey. The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using a propensity score matching procedure. Participants were provided with a survey URL link. After completing informed consent, participants completed the survey online. The study was approved by the University of Southern California Institutional Review Board (UP-21-00135). Respondents were randomly assigned to watch 10 10-second long TikTok videos in either experimental (influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities ) or control group (influencers showing healthy lifestyle activity alone).

Enrollment: 1,500 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 24 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18-24 years of age,
• English fluency,
• Current California resident.

The survey was sampled to be representative by age group (18 to 24) and gender, and was weighted to be representative by age, gender, race, and educational attainment using propensity score weighting.

Exclusion criteria

Not meeting these criteria:

• 18-24 years of age,
• English fluency,
• Current California resident.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Factorial Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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1,500 participants in 2 patient groups

Videos featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities

Experimental group

Description:

Young adults were randomly shown 10 videos, featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities (experimental group).

Treatment:

Other: Videos featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities

Videos featuring influencers showing healthy lifestyle activities

Active Comparator group

Description:

Young adults were randomly shown 10 videos, featuring influencers promoting healthy lifestyle activity alone (control).

Treatment:

Other: Videos featuring influencers promoting e-cigarettes alongside healthy lifestyle activities