Clinical trial NCT06433466: Influencer Marketing: a Survey-based Experiment
Official title: The Impact of Instagram and TikTok Influencer Marketing on Perceptions of E-cigarettes in Young Adults: a Survey-based Experiment
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Vaping
Lead sponsor: University of Southern California
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2024-05-29
Enrollment: 1500
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 24
Standard ages: ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: FACTORIAL
Primary purpose: OTHER

Brief summary: 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.

Detailed 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).

Eligibility criteria: 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.

Primary outcomes:
measure: harm perceptions of e-cigarettes
timeFrame: one-time assessment after the experimental exposure (immediately post-treatment)
measure: Susceptibility to use e-cigarettes
timeFrame: one-time assessment after the experimental exposure (immediately post-treatment)
measure: Perceptions of influencer credibility
timeFrame: assessed 10 times after each video (during treatment, immediately after each video)
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Los Angeles
country: United States
facility: YouGov, online
state: California
Study officials:
References: