Ayton, P orcid.org/0000-0003-2285-4608 and Weiss-Cohen, L orcid.org/0000-0001-6355-9619 (2021) Smoking versus vaping: how (not) to communicate their relative harms. Journal of Risk Research, 24 (2). pp. 198-214. ISSN 1366-9877
Abstract
Here we consider how the relative harms of two nicotine products were communicated in a public health campaign. Following a peer-reviewed evaluation that rated the relative harm of a range of nicotine products relative to the harm of smoking, and which rated the relative harm of vaping as about 5% that of smoking (D. J. Nutt et al., 2014 European Addiction Research, 20(5), 218–225), the UK government launched a campaign which transposed these relative harms into relative safety, promoting the message that “vaping is 95% safer than smoking”. We discuss the communication issues arising from transposing a measure of relative harms into relative safety and report the results of an experiment which shows that significantly more people correctly appreciated the ratio of the relative harms from smoking and vaping after reading the statement “vaping is 5% as harmful as smoking” than after reading the statement “vaping is 95% safer than smoking”. We discuss the policy implications of our findings.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an author produced version of an article published in Journal of Risk Research. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Risk perception, risk communication, health policy, psychology of judgment |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Accounting & Finance Division (LUBS) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Management Division (LUBS) (Leeds) > Management Division Decision Research (LUBS) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Sep 2020 15:18 |
Last Modified: | 21 Jul 2022 13:35 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/13669877.2020.1749117 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:165793 |