Effects of antismoking messages from media on adolescent smoking: The roles of family, school, and culture

Considering the context of family, school, and culture, this paper examines the effectiveness of antismoking messages from public media in influencing adolescents' smoking intention. Specifically, it proposes a model of the impact of antismoking messages on teen smoking intentions, in which media and its interactions with family and school serve as antecedents, adolescents' perceived personal attractiveness and social attractiveness as mediators, and the country-level power distance as the moderator. Utilizing representative data from teenagers in 23 countries, the findings suggest that media exerts a significant impact on adolescents' smoking-related personal attractiveness and social attractiveness, which in turn, affect their smoking intention. In addition, the effectiveness of media is contingent upon the channels of family and school in such a way that the impact of media on adolescents becomes stronger if family and school also deliver antismoking messages. Furthermore, power distance across different countries provides an important context for the individual-level effects. Antismoking messages from media channels are influential in low-power distance countries but not in high-power distance countries; however, family and school channels have a stronger moderating effect in high- vs. low-power distance countries.