O CIGARRO E A SAÚDE: instruir positivamente ou provocar o medo?

Abstract

The Federal Constitution of 1988 brought significant changes in the architecture and functioning of the State, making possible the creation of new strategies to enable the formulation and implementation of public policies in Brazil. In this context, it can be said that the health sector serves as a model for the participative practices of shared decisions and played an important role in the exercise of social control, allowing the protagonism of the organized civil society in the most diverse public spaces, which includes decisions on sectoral policies to prevent and combat smoking. Thus, the objective of this study was to verify the influence of health warnings with positive and negative framing on cigarette packs in the intention to quit smoking and in the emotion (guilt and shame) of smokers from the perspective of the Regulatory Focus Theory in a context of Social Marketing. The experimental study presents a 2x2 factorial design: two warnings (appeal to fear versus positive) and two regulatory focuses (promotional versus preventive). The results have shown that although media appeals did not have the expected effect, smokers with a promotional profile tend to have a greater intention to quit smoking than preventive smokers. The results contribute to the theme, since there is still no consensus regarding the influence of messages of this nature on the use intention of smokers, also collaborating with inputs for public policy makers. The relevant conclusions of this study, regarding the positive and negative framing, point out that the relationship between these two poles can be justified by the fact that the use of nicotine causes addiction and, therefore, smokers may need medical treatment to be able to quit smoking and not only persuasive communication.

Keywords

• smoking
• public policies
• regulatory focus theory
• positive and negative framing
• social marketing