Introduction
High-risk binge drinking among college students is one of the most challenging problems on college campuses. Binge drinking is a pattern of drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration to 0.08 g/dL, which typically occurs after 4 drinks for women and 5 drinks for men in one sitting (NIH, 2020). Problematically, drinking has become a common ritual among college students as they consider it an integral part of the college experience (NIH, 2020); 81% of students engage in drinking behavior at some point in college and over 37% of students are actively involved in binge drinking on college campuses (CBHSQ, 2019). The rate of drinking to become intoxicated is alarmingly high - as much as 47% (Wechsler & Nelson, 2008). This high prevalence of excessive alcohol consumption among college students posits serious health and safety risks (e.g., drunk-driving, assaults, sexual assaults, injuries, car crashes, alcohol induced-liver disease) as well as negative consequences on their academic performance (NIH, 2020). As a result, it has received heightened attention from public health advocates and policy officials with the aim of reducing problematic drinking patterns and associated risks on campuses.
Alcohol companies are often the target of criticism for creating alcohol-friendly environments by promoting and encouraging alcohol consumption through various marketing tactics and advertisements (Henehan et al., 2018; NIH, 2020). Students face an environment filled with alcohol advertisements that contain little information on the potentially harmful effects of excessive alcohol use (Atkin et al., 2008). Alcohol companies consistently attempt to normalize drunkenness. Their marketing communications easily sublimate the idea of intoxication into partying or celebration, while leaving references to drunkenness up to users (Nicholls, 2012). As alcohol advertising has embraced social media to find ways to influence and interact with young adults (Carah, 2017), and as such online marketing influences health behaviors (Buchanan, et al., 2018; Lobstein et al., 2017), product promotions by alcohol companies have become more concerning.
To counter such criticisms, alcohol companies began to promote responsible drinking health campaign messages voluntarily and stated their sincerity in demonstrating social responsibility by addressing possible harmful effects caused by and/or related to students’ binge drinking issues (e.g., Anheuser-Busch, 2020; Miller, 2020). However, critics are skeptical of the industry’s responsible drinking campaign because it presents a conflict of interest, appears infrequently, and most importantly, the campaign messages are too ambiguous to be effective (Atkin et al., 2008). Many note that alcohol companies seem to intentionally utilize strategically ambiguous messages in their responsible drinking campaigns, without providing any explicit information on what constituted of responsible drinking (Hessari & Petticrew, 2018; Smith et al., 2014). For students who may have a naïve criterion for binge drinking, the suggestion of drinking responsibly can instead function as a cue to action - i.e., to drink responsibly, not necessarily drink responsibly. While there have been studies that found there is little to no robust evidence that industry-sponsored ambiguous messages reduce college students’ problematic drinking, relatively little empirical research has been done to demonstrate the possible adverse impact of strategically ambiguous responsible drinking messages on college students’ pro-drinking perceptions (i.e., increasing harmful drinking, especially among heavier drinkers).
This study attempts to extend the line of studies regarding the impact of strategically ambiguous messages by alcohol companies (e.g., Atkin et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2006) by filling the void on the possible adverse effects of such messages. More specifically, this study attempts to examine how such ambiguous messages impact college students’ perception of their knowledge as well as the psychological reactance tendency and subsequently influence the formation of attitudes and intent toward responsible drinking practices and alcohol consumption. While past studies evaluated the relationship between exposure to responsible drinking ads and youth perception of companies that promote such ads (e.g., Smith et al., 2006), little is known about the psychological mechanisms which might underlie the effects of alcohol responsibility ads on young adults’ pro-drinking perceptions or their practice of responsible drinking.
College students represent an important subpopulation of many nations. In the United States, 18.5 million students are enrolled at any one time, and nearly 55% of the population attends college at some point in their lives (Census, 2018). Given the prevalence of binge drinking among college students and its associated risks, it is important to uncover the impact of strategically ambiguous messages by alcohol companies on students’ perceptions. The goal of responsible drinking campaigns in relation to excessive alcohol consumption must be to reduce alcohol abuse and alcohol-related problems (Atkin et al., 2008). This study’s findings will provide public health advocates and scholars useful empirical insight on the mechanism of how strategic ambiguity in responsible drinking messages affect college students. The findings of this study are expected to be useful for NGOs and regulators in proposing appropriate suggestions or regulations for the alcohol industry’s responsible drinking campaigns.
Literature Review
Alcohol Industry’s Drink Responsibility Campaign
While corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives by alcohol companies take various forms (e.g., responsible drinking, the prevention of drunk driving or underage drinking, sponsoring non-profit partners etc.), the most visible and commonly used campaign messages across those initiatives are drink responsibly. For example, Anheuser-Busch, the largest brewing company in the U.S., emphasizes their commitment to alcohol responsibility in its business practices (Anheuser-Busch, 2020). According to Anheuser-Busch (2020), their first responsible drinking message, Budweiser Means Moderation, dates back more than 100 years, and their first major responsible drinking campaign, Know When to Say When, has been around more than 35 years. Anheuser-Busch (2020) reported expenditures of more than $1 billion on advertising campaigns and community programs nationwide to promote responsible drinking behaviors. As such, the alcohol industry uses responsible drinking messaging as a central element of its corporate social responsibility activities to address public concern over alcohol-related harms.
However, critics have raised doubts about whether such ad campaigns are a manipulative tool meant to generate a more favorable perception of alcohol use, corporate image, increase sales of certain brands, or avoid stricter regulations by appeasing activists and public health practitioners (Barry & Goodson, 2010, 2011; Kim & Park, 2018; Smith et al., 2006; Wolburg, 2005). Substantial resources have been invested to support responsible drinking initiatives, but this constitutes only a fraction of the amount that the mainstream industry spends to market its products (Barry & Goodson, 2012). Anheuser-Busch spent $1.6 billion on television product advertising and $52 million on other television advertising between 2001 and 2005 (Nielsen, 2006). Ross, Brewer, and Jernigan (2016) found that youth were exposed 15.1 billion times to alcohol advertisements from 2005 to 2012, which aired on programs that did not comply with advertising placement guidelines, and that 96% of these noncompliant advertisements aired on cable television. Furthermore, informational ad campaigns that feature the message drink responsibly are carefully framed and presented in a way to promote alcohol products and the alcohol companies (Hessari & Petticrew, 2018; Smith et al., 2006).
Strategically Ambiguous Drink Responsibility Messages
One of the major criticisms of the industry’s campaigns was that the messages are too ambiguous to be effective and therefore seem to serve as a manipulative tool to mollify critics (Hessari & Petticrew, 2018; Mialon & McCambridge, 2018; Smith et al., 2006). The concept of strategic ambiguity was first introduced by Eisenberg (1984). In organizational communication settings, a message sender often purposefully omits certain contextual cues to allow for multiple interpretations on the part of message receivers (Eisenberg, 1984). Organizations see engaging in strategic ambiguity as a political necessity and use it so that different constituent groups can apply different interpretations to the same messages (Eisenberg, 1984). When confronted with ambiguous messages, recipients add context and meaning according to their pre-existing attitudes and cognitive processing skills, thereby producing a wide range of responses (Smith et al., 2006). While such strategic ambiguity allows for various interpretations among message receivers, the critical function of strategic ambiguity is to create a widespread consensus in bottom-line outcomes of the messages (Eisenberg, 1984). In other words, strategic ambiguity is used purposely to foster a sense of consensus or agreement on the core message without necessarily limiting specific interpretations. While the usage of strategic ambiguity is not necessarily a negative thing in organizational communication settings (e.g., academic freedom), that is not the case with alcohol companies’ responsible drinking campaigns.
Several previous studies have argued that alcohol companies utilize the strategic ambiguity in a way to boost their business bottom line by purposefully not providing specific definitions or guidelines on alcohol responsibility (Atkin et al., 2008; Hessari & Petticrew, 2018; Smith et al., 2006) as the term is typically not defined in the industry’s campaigns (Dejong et al., 1992; Hessari & Petticrew, 2018; Smith et al., 2006). Instead, the industry uses highly vague and overly simplistic slogans such as Know When to Say When or Always Be in Control (Smith et al., 2006; Wolburg, 2005). Such messages purposefully and strategically avoid addressing informative content aimed at preventing excessive drinking (Dejong et al., 1992), and do not address the severity of the risks associated with excessive drinking (Wolburg, 2005). None of the messages emphasize abstinence as an option even though there are certain situations when people should not drink at all (Dejong et al., 1992; Ringold, 2002; Wolburg, 2005). It is important to note that PSAs by public health agencies have largely opposite features in that they address in greater detail information regarding self-efficacy, risks, benefits, or social norms associated with alcohol consumption (Wolburg, 2005). In addition, these PSAs actively utilize vivid slogans, provide supporting evidence, and offer easily applicable and memorable behavior guidelines (Lee & Kotler, 2015).
In its evaluation of brewer-sponsored campaigns, prior studies showed that the use of strategic ambiguity in responsible drinking messages can be quite useful for alcohol companies to achieve multiple bottom line goals (i.e., creating socially responsible image, increase sales, increase brand favorability) across various target publics (i.e., consumers, regulators, etc.) with the same message (i.e., drink responsibly) (Atkin et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2006). Nonetheless, message receivers generally showed greater company favorability and more positive perception of such companies after exposure to the campaigns sponsored by brewers. This is consistent with Eisenberg (1984)’s explanation - that strategic ambiguity can facilitate selective perception of message content, preempt counterarguing, and minimize source derogation. It just does not necessarily have meaningful impact on advocating the public health message itself. This is troubling in that such campaigns may just be gimmicking marketing tools to facilitate underlying business interests without any impact on the promotion of public health.
This study proposes a dual path model using two mediating concepts, including perceived knowledge and psychological reactance to investigate college students’ differing reactions to strategically ambiguous responsible drinking campaign messages versus informative responsible drinking campaign messages.
Strategic Ambiguity and Perceived Knowledge
Effects of strategic ambiguity on perceived knowledge
A strategically ambiguous message is purposefully constructed to foster freedom and flexibility in inference-making and interpretation of a given message. Smith et al. (2006) found that brewer-sponsored responsible drinking campaigns engendered diverse interpretations among study participants, but the selective perceptions translated into relatively uniform positive corporate images. Then, the question is whether young adults have a generally good understanding and basic knowledge of responsible alcohol and drinking practices to begin with. Barry and Goodson (2011)’s study provides good insight in that it explored how college students conceptualize, interpret and/or practice responsible drinking. Students provided a wide range of interpretations as to what constitutes moderate drinking limits (Barry & Goodson, 2011), ranging from not blacking out to throwing up to buzzing. This finding indicates the serious lack of a consensus definition of responsible drinking among college students. Furthermore, what students consider to be responsible drinking practices was indeed comprised of incorrect and potentially harmful behaviors (Barry & Goodson, 2011). The authors therefore emphasized that the notion of responsible drinking and its characteristics should be clearly and explicitly communicated.
In evaluating young adults’ responsible drinking knowledge, Dowling et al. (2006) report that college students have demonstrated little knowledge of responsible drinking practices across what a standard drink means, the minimum number of standard drinks required to reach the legal blood alcohol driving limit, and actions to lower blood alcohol levels. That means, a substantial proportion of college students hold incorrect beliefs as to responsible drinking, and it is reasonable to assume that this lack of knowledge prevents young adults from engaging in responsible drinking practices, even if they are motivated and intend to monitor and control alcohol consumption (Dowling et al., 2006). Given the situation, the alcohol industry’s ambiguous messages can make college students’ lack of consensus and objective knowledge on responsible alcohol consumption worse.
The over-confidence effect is a well-documented bias in the realm of psychology, and it explains that individuals tend to hold greater subjective confidence in their judgment than the objective accuracy of their judgment (Gilovich, 1991). Simply put, individuals tend to over-estimate their knowledge, performance, or judgment, and such overconfidence seems to be a persistent and typical cognitive tendency (Pallier et al., 2002). Pallier et al. (2002) found that self-assessment of accuracy tends to spark overconfidence among individuals; when people rate their answers as 99 percent certain, their answers are incorrect 40 percent of the time. That is, there is a systematic error of judgment made by individuals when they assess the correctness of their knowledge level. Therefore, the industry’s strategic ambiguity is open to criticism that it encourages college students to adopt very naïve notions of alcohol responsibility with overconfidence in their judgment. In this study, the term perceived levels of knowledge refers to one’s subjective judgment or belief in one’s knowledge level on responsible drinking issues - apart from actual knowledge. It is expected that when exposed to ambiguous messages, students will likely perceive themselves as having higher levels of knowledge. Conversely, informative messages will constrain students’ freedom to construct different interpretations and prevent the effects of over-confidence (Ross & Ward, 1996), which can result in lower perceived levels of knowledge. Thus, the following hypothesis is derived:
H1: When exposed to ambiguous responsible drinking messages, college students will be more likely to evaluate themselves as having higher levels of knowledge on alcohol responsibility than when they are exposed to informative messages.
Individuals are prone to adopt self-serving and comforting beliefs while engaging any cognitive mechanisms (Gilovich, 1991). When providing context for strategically ambiguous messages to infer their meaning, such cognitive tendencies are more likely to appear. In other words, the industry’s strategically ambiguous slogans or content can provide college students the freedom of construction of their own version of alcohol responsibility, favoring their own interests and attitudinal predispositions toward drinking. It is highly plausible that heavier drinkers perceive responsible drinking in a way to comfort and serve their own interests (i.e., drinking) and therefore show greater confidence in their perceived knowledge in alcohol responsibility. To test whether the impact of strategic ambiguity on participants’ perceived level of knowledge would be amplified among heavier drinkers, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H2a-b: When exposed to ambiguous responsible drinking messages, heavier drinkers are more likely to evaluate themselves as having higher levels of knowledge on alcohol responsibility (a); however, when exposed to informative messages, respondents’ alcohol involvement will not impact their perceived level of knowledge (b).
Effects of perceived knowledge
By not communicating appropriate and specific guidelines or instructions, ambiguous responsible drinking messages leave it up to the individual college student to decide or interpret the meaning of responsible drinking (Dejong et al., 1992). For heavier drinkers who may have naïve criterion for binge drinking, the suggestion of drinking responsibly can function as a cue to action - i.e., a cue to drink responsibly. If that is the case as many have feared (e.g., Atkin et al., 2008; Dejong et al., 1992; Smith et al., 2006), the alcohol industry’s ambiguous responsible drinking messages can serve to solidify their consumer bases and promote product consumption, instead of carrying any positive public health impact, such as reducing high-risk binge drinking among college students. Indeed, exposure to industry sponsored advertisements causes young adults to perceive the industry more favorably (Smith et al., 2006) and the positive perception of sponsor credibility following exposure to an industry-sponsored campaign enhanced positive attitudes toward drinking, which strengthened intent to drink (Kim & Park, 2018). In other words, there are possible adverse effects - i.e., students desire to drink more, mistakenly thinking they have sufficient knowledge on how to practice responsible drinking. Therefore, the following hypotheses were proposed:
H3: Respondents with higher levels of perceived knowledge on alcohol responsibility are likely to display more favorable attitudes toward the campaign message.
H4: Respondents with higher levels of perceived knowledge on alcohol responsibility are likely to display more favorable attitudes toward drinking (a) and consequently a greater intent to drink (b).
Strategic Ambiguity and Psychological Reactance
This study proposes that strategically ambiguous messages by alcohol companies are less likely to stimulate psychological reactance among college students because it permits greater freedom in interpreting the meaning. On the other hand, informative messages may stimulate reactance especially among heavier drinkers, but eventually produce generally more desirable public health outcomes due to its explicit communications on responsible drinking to its intended target publics (i.e., college students).
Sometimes, persuasive health promotion campaign messages by public health advocates (e.g., informative responsible drinking PSAs) fail to achieve their intended outcomes with limited or no effect. For example, Wechsler et al. (2002) found that while most underage students who lived on campus (e.g., dormitories or fraternity/sorority house) received information about alcohol from their university, students’ exposure to educational materials from their school did not make any meaningful difference in their level of excessive drinking. Scholars have witnessed that some public health messages even trigger the opposite effect of what the campaign is expected to bring due to psychosocial reactance (Rains, 2013; Ringold, 2002). To be able to better understand the impact of strategically ambiguous campaign messages compared to more informative messages, it is important to unpack the possible boomerang effects of informative messages on psychological reactance among students and whether strategic ambiguity in messages makes any difference in students’ reactance to the message of drink responsibly, and the substantial impact of the psychological reactance level on the outcomes of the campaigns.
Psychological reactance by Brehm and Brehm (1981) has been a long-standing topic of interest among scholars studying the design and effects of persuasive health promotion messages and campaigns. The theory of psychological reactance explains the conditions under which persuasive messages trigger individuals to reject the message and dislike the advocacy. Here, the motivational state that causes individuals to refuse persuasive messages is referred as psychological reactance (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Brehm and Brehm (1981) proposed four elements (i.e., freedom, threat to freedom, reactance, and restoration of freedom) to explain what motivates individuals to show reactance, and how the aroused reactance influences the process of persuasion. Notably, when individuals face threats to their freedom to act (e.g. threats to freedom to drink), they are immediately motivated to reject the threats to restore their freedom. Prior studies have shown that individuals especially tend to resist persuasive attempts when the messages relate to health-risk information such as smoking cessation or reduction in alcohol consumption (Pavey & Sparks, 2009; Rains, 2013). For example, when exposed to a cigarette health warning, respondents showed an increased desire to smoke, and that such increase was even greater among smokers (Hyland & Birrell, 1979). A stronger reactance tendency can also be observed in messages that connote a more authoritative tone (Ringold, 2002) and in messages that use more direct language and do not leave audiences with room for interpretation by omitting unclear and ambiguous language (Grice, 1975). Given that public health messages tend to be explicitly directive in nature and college students perceive of themselves as being capable and worthy of determining their own health outcomes (Miller et al., 2007), young adults may respond to controlling messages with an increased level of psychological reactance, rendering them ineffective (Ringold, 2002). Fearing such reactance tendency among young adults, especially people with higher involvement in the issue (e.g., heavier smokers, heavier drinkers), some scholars proposed that using ambiguous messages that reduce the reactance tendency and leave it up to the receiver to make up their own minds can be a more effective way to avoid harmful unintended effects (Miller et al., 2007).
However, as discussed earlier, in the context of responsible drinking, there may be little to be gained by using ambiguous messages to improve knowledge on responsible drinking, not to mention the potential cost of oppositional impact (i.e., more drinking based on their own naïve interpretations what it means). It is reasonable to expect that ambiguous messages, as opposed to explicitly directive informative messages, can reduce psychological reactance, especially among heavier drinkers. However, the influence of ambiguous and informative messages on psychological reactance and in achieving desirable public health outcomes should be carefully examined.
Effects of strategic ambiguity on psychological reactance
A message inadvertently threatens the freedom of target audiences and creates psychological reactance, which in turn motivates the audience to restore their freedom through means such as derogating the source (Smith, 1977), adopting a position that is the opposite of what is advocated in the message (Worchel & Brehm, 1970), or perceiving the object or behavior associated with the threatened freedom to be more attractive (Hammock & Brehm, 1966). Once reactance is aroused, individuals try to restore the freedoms by diverse means. Since the aroused reactance is related with negative emotions and counterarguments, it is more likely to result in negative attitudes toward the message or intent to act against the persuasive messages. People may derogate the source of threats (Kohn & Barnes, 1977), or intentionally do the forbidden behaviors more (Dillars & Shen, 2005). In the case of responsible drinking campaigns, aroused reactance can generate negative attitudes toward the campaign message. Phycological reactance generally causes negative reactions toward the persuasive attempts. Given that psychological reactance includes both emotional reactance and cognitive reactance (Dillars & Shen, 2005), whether individuals become irritated (high emotional reactance), are not convinced by campaign messages (high cognitive reactance), or a combination of both, will influence the process of decision making to restore threatened freedoms. This study proposes that informative messages will stimulate emotional reactance among respondents due to their explicitly instructive nature compared to ambiguous messages. However, when it comes to cognitive reactance, the informative messages will reduce the cognitive reactance among heavier drinkers, and eventually produce better reactions toward the campaign messages. To examine the differing effects of ambiguous messages vs. informative message on emotional reactance and cognitive reactance, the following hypotheses were proposed:
H5: When exposed to informative responsible drinking messages, college students will be more likely to show greater emotional reactance than when they are exposed to ambiguous responsible drinking messages.
H6: Heavier drinkers will be more likely to show greater emotional reactance across both alcohol responsibility messages.
H7a-b: When exposed to informative responsible drinking messages, heavier drinkers will be more likely to show cognitive reactance to the alcohol responsibility message(a); however, when exposed to ambiguous messages, heavier drinkers will be less likely to show cognitive reactance to the alcohol responsibility message (b).
H8: Respondents with greater cognitive reactance are less likely to show positive attitudes toward the campaign message.
H9: Respondents with greater emotional reactance are less likely to show positive attitudes toward the campaign message.
Although emotional reactance causes negative reactions in general, in some cases, individuals try to find their freedom in more positive ways such as embracing the threats (Brehm et al.,1966; Hammock & Brehm, 1966) or by searching for alternative ways to achieve similar freedoms (Wicklund, 1974). It is still somewhat unclear whether the reactance tendency induced by the campaign messages will directly stimulate greater perceptions toward drinking as a way to cope with the reactance. Or rather, respondents will embrace the explicit information on alcohol responsibility despite possible reactance and show a less favorable perception of drinking. Therefore, this study seeks to explore how reactance that is induced by the messages may influence respondents’ general attitudes toward drinking, and consequently their intent to drink.
RQ1: What are the relationships between respondent’s attitudes toward drinking and psychological reactance (an emotional reactance, a cognitive reactance) induced by the campaign messages?
RQ2: How does the impact of attitudes toward the campaign messages on drinking intent differ from the impact of attitudes toward drinking on drinking intent?
The conceptual relationship between the proposed variables can be found in Figure 1.
Methods
To test the proposed hypotheses, the study employed a between-subject design with a single factor (strategically ambiguous message vs. informative message), which is useful for comparing different types of conditions (Rifon et al., 2004).
Stimuli and Pretest
For stimuli, four responsible drinking campaign print ads were created (two ads per condition). Although actual responsible drinking campaign ads by alcohol companies often contain messages conveying promotional information (e.g., appealing product qualities or how the product should be consumed, glorified images of drinking and partying, etc.), the focal point of the study is examining the impact of strategically ambiguous messages compared to informative messages. Therefore, the print ads stimuli did not include any promotional information or glorified images of drinking, but instead contained the image of alcohol bottles in the background with either ambiguous or informative campaign messages. Strategic ambiguity was manipulated by including a vague slogan often used by the alcohol industry - Drink Responsibly or Drink in Moderation with little information on how to practice responsible drinking. The informative message, on the other hand, contained the same slogans but also contained the definition of binge drinking (i.e., 4 drinks for women and 5 drinks for men in one sitting) or binge drinking statistics and effects. All other elements of the ads were the same across the two experimental conditions, such as word count and images. The actual stimuli used in the experiment can be found in the appendix. A pretest (n=101) was conducted to check the manipulation of stimuli. The level of information in the given ads was evaluated by using a 7-point Likert scale. Perceptions on the level of how informative the ads were varied significantly between conditions as intended (F (1,100) =45.41, p <.001). In addition, the study checked how believable the stimuli were through 1 item on a seven-point semantic differential scale: “completely unbelievable” to “completely believable” (Mohr & Webb, 2005). Testing believability of stimuli is a common measure in experiment studies to overcome the disadvantages associated with the artificiality of the experiment (e.g., Mohr & Webb, 2005; Kim, 2017). There was no significant difference between groups in terms of believability, meaning that participants perceived the given ads as believable across different groups. Because the manipulation was successful, the stimuli was used for actual data collection.
Data Collection
After receiving the approval of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), participants aged 18 years or older were recruited from various courses at a large southern university in the United States. Participants were e-mailed a link to an online survey site, Qualtrics. After they read an informed consent and agreed to continue with the study, they were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions (i.e., ambiguous message and informative message conditions) by using a randomization function of Qualtrics. Each experimental condition contained two ads designed for the given experimental condition. Each participant was asked to read the two ads for the given condition and then fill out an online questionnaire that contains measurements of key variables as well as basic demographic information.
A total of 342 college students participated in the experiment. A total of 173 (50.5%) were exposed to informative responsible drinking messages and 169 (49.5%) were exposed to ambiguous responsible drinking messages. Among 342, 107 were male (31.3%) and 234 (68.4%) were female. The average age of participants was 20.44 years old (SD=4.5). Approximately 65% (n=225) of participants were Caucasian, 7.6% (n=26) were African American, 5.3% (n=18) were Asian and 16.4% (n=56) were Hispanic. According to the U.S. Census (2019), 52.9 % of undergraduate students are Caucasian, 15.1% are Black/African American, 7.6% are Asian and 20.9 % are Hispanic. Participants in this study seem to slightly overrepresent Caucasians and underrepresent minority groups. However, when tested, ethnicity did not impact any of the dependent variables and there were no significant differences across different ethnic groups associated with drinking frequency and amount, implying that the current composition of ethnic groups does not posit any internal validity issues in this study.
Among participants, 13.8% reported that they never drink, 19.7% reported they drink monthly, 36.5% reported weekly, 25.7% reported daily. When asked the number of drinks that they typically drink on one occasion, 35.5% said less than 2, 35.9% said between 3 and 4, 28.6% said more than 5 drinks. When asked how often they have 5 or more drinks in one sitting, 31.6% said never, 32.3% said less than monthly, 21.7% said monthly, 12.5% said weekly and 1.6% said daily. In the U.S., the legal drinking age is 21 years old, while college students are generally between 18-24 years old. There is a possibility that whether or not students are of legal drinking age may influence their drinking behaviors. If such is the case, the results will need to be tested by controlling for this factor. Thus, it is necessary to check whether there are meaningful differences between the two groups. After splitting the data according to age into underage versus legal drinking age groups, three chi-squared tests were performed to determine whether there were meaningful differences between the two groups in terms of drinking frequency, drinking amount, and binge-drinking frequency. There were no statistical differences between the two groups, meaning that students’ drinking tendencies are similar across underage and legal drinking age groups.
Measurements
To measure participants’ subjective perception of their knowledge level on responsible drinking, they were asked to answer how knowledgeable they think they are about responsible drinking topics/practices on a seven-point semantic differential scale (Park et al., 1988); not knowledgeable at all/extremely knowledgeable, not aware of it at all/ extremely aware of it, and not familiar with it at all/ extremely familiar with it (Cronbach’s α =.92, M= 6.01, SD=.99). Aroused emotional reactance was measured using four items on a seven-point semantic differential scale (Dillard & Shen, 2005): irritated, angry, annoyed, and aggravated (1- no feeling, 7- a great deal of this feeling, Cronbach’s α =.94, M=2.59, SD=1.61). To examine cognitive reactance, participants were asked to write down their thoughts after reading the given ads. The data was coded in a three-step sequence by two coders. First, sentences relating to emotional reactance (anger) were removed according to the list of feeling terms by Shaver et al. (1987). Second, the collected data was coded using a scale from 1 to 7 - where 1 represented supportive cognitive thoughts and 7 represented thoughts that were not supportive. Supportive thoughts were operationally defined as “responses that expressed agreement with the message, self-identification, and positive thoughts toward the message, the message source, or the advocacy; and intention to comply with the advocacy in the message” (Dillard & Shen, 2005, p. 154). On the other hand, negative cognitive thoughts were operationally defined as “responses that expressed disagreement with the message, negative intention to comply with the advocacy, intention to engage in the risky behavior, derogations of the source” (p. 154). Intercoder reliability was calculated using ReCal ORI, a software that computes intercoder reliability coefficients for all levels of measurement (i.e., nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio level data) (Freelon, 2013). Krippendorff’s α was calculated for the case of interval level data and two coders (Krippendorff’s α = .95, M= 4.2, SD=2.16). Alcohol involvement was evaluated using the Personal Involvement Inventory (PII) by Zaichkowsky (1985); participants were asked to rate seven items on a seven-point semantic differential scale: important/unimportant, of no concern/of concern to me, means a lot to me/means nothing to me, matters to me/does not matter, and significant/insignificant (Cronbach’s α = .95, M=3.98, SD=1.52). Attitude towards the message were evaluated using three seven point semantic differential scales (MacKenzie & Lutz, 1989): negative/positive, unfavorable/favorable, and bad/good, in response to the question “identify your feelings about the campaign message” (Cronbach’s α =.96, M=5.44, SD=1.44). Intent to follow the requested action was evaluated using three items on a seven point semantic differential scale (Yi, 1990): Very unlikely/very likely, improbable/probable, and impossible/possible, in response to the question “How likely are you to follow the requested action in the campaign?” (Cronbach’s α =.97, M=5.61, SD=1.41). Attitude towards drinking was evaluated using three items on a seven-point semantic differential scale (MacKenzie & Lutz, 1989): negative/positive, unfavorable/favorable, and bad/good in response to the question “identify your feelings about drinking” (Cronbach’s α =.95, M=4.46, SD=1.45). Intent to drink was evaluated by asking participants how likely they are to drink in the near future on a seven-point semantic differential scale (Yi, 1990): very unlikely/very likely, improbable/probable, and impossible/possible (Cronbach’s α =.98, M=5.38, SD=1.81).
Apart from the measurements for hypotheses testing, actual knowledge level, drinking status, demographic information and reactance personal trait questions were included. Actual knowledge was measured for a post-hoc analysis to test whether perceived knowledge plays a different role from actual knowledge. Participants were given twelve statements and asked to answer whether each statement was true or false. The statements, retrieved from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2018), encompassed topics including binge drinking definitions, standard drink sizes, binge drinking related risks, preventative measures for binge drinking, costs of excessive drinking and alcohol death statistics. Actual knowledge level was operationalized as the cumulative scores of correct answers. Drinking status and basic demographics such as gender, race, and age were measured because they have been found to relate to drinking issues in general (Wolburg, 2005). Drinking status was measured using the first three items of the AUDIT survey by the World Health Organization (WHO) (Babor et al., 2001). These included questions about how often a person has alcoholic drinks, how many drinks are consumed a day, and how often people have five or more drinks. Personal trait reactance was measured as a control variable due to its possible relationship with an aroused emotional reactance. Hong and Faedda (1996)’s 11-item reactance items on a seven-point scale was used (Cronbach’s α =.77; M=4.01, SD=.76).
Results
Before analyzing the data for hypotheses testing, whether the manipulations were successful was checked. Perceptions on the level of how informative the ads were varied significantly between groups as intended (F (1,341) =100.78, p <.001). There was no significant difference between groups in terms of believability, meaning that participants perceived the given ads as believable across different groups. Also, there was no significant difference between groups in terms of personal trait reactance, drinking status or actual knowledge level, meaning the randomization was successful and that there were no systematic errors or mean differences between experimental conditions when it comes to believability, personal trait reactance, drinking status and actual knowledge level.
Hypotheses Testing
A path analysis was employed to evaluate the hypothesized model. An interaction term of perceived knowledge level and reactance was added to the model so that the significance of the interaction effects stated in the hypotheses could be evaluated. In terms of message type, the informative message was coded as 1 and the ambiguous message was coded as 2. The model was tested via AMOS 26 using the following indexes - the comparative fit index (CFI), the normed fit index (NFI), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). In addition, the path coefficients were assessed for statistical significance at p <.05. The results yielded superior goodness-of-fit indexes, indicating that the hypothesized model fit the observed data. The CFI and the NFI yielded excellent indexes of .998 and .975, respectively. The RMSEA reported a value of .015, indicating another excellent fit of the model. As shown in Table 1 and Figure 2, the path coefficients of solid lines were statistically significant.
H1 posited the main effects of message type on perceived knowledge level. The results of this path analysis suggest there was no main effect of message type on perceived knowledge, and therefore H1 was not supported.
H2 proposed interaction effects of message types and alcohol involvement on perceived knowledge level. The analysis showed that alcohol involvement moderates the impact of ambiguous versus informative messages on perceived knowledge level as shown in Figure 2. Because the interactive term’s path to perceived knowledge was statistically significant (β=.14, p <.01), a follow-up test plotted the two-way interaction effects by using regression coefficients of each variable (i.e., message type and alcohol involvement). As shown in Figure 3, when exposed to ambiguous messages, heavier drinkers reported their perceived knowledge level as significantly higher than lighter drinkers. On the other hand, when exposed to informative messages, respondents reported their perceived knowledge level as relatively neutral across different alcohol involvement levels. Therefore, H2a-b were supported.
H3 and H4 examined the impact of perceived knowledge on attitudes toward the campaign message and attitudes toward drinking. The results showed that as participants believe their knowledge level to be higher, they showed more positive attitudes toward drinking (β=.16, p <.01). As discussed above, when exposed to ambiguous messages, heavier drinkers reported that their perceived knowledge level was significantly higher than lighter drinkers, while exposure to the informative messages did not lead to such overconfident errors among heavier drinkers. This indicates that the false perception of perceived knowledge caused by ambiguous messages directly influenced college students’ formation of more positive attitudes toward drinking and consequently influence drinking intent. However, there was no significant impact of perceived knowledge on attitudes toward the campaign message. Thus, H3 was not supported, while H4a-b were supported
H5 and H6 predicted the main effects of message type and alcohol involvement on emotional reactance. As to emotional reactance (i.e., anger), message types and alcohol involvement both demonstrated a significant degree of variance explained with -.11 (p <.05) and .14 (p <.01), respectively. Given that an informative message was coded as 1 and an ambiguous message was coded as 2, respondents who were exposed to ambiguous messages displayed significantly lower emotional reactance compared to informative messages as anticipated. Heavier drinkers in general showed significantly greater anger. Therefore, H5 and H6 are supported.
As for cognitive reactance, H7a-b proposed interaction effects between the message type and alcohol involvement. The analysis showed that alcohol involvement moderates the impact of ambiguous versus informative messages on cognitive reactance as shown in Figure 4. Because the interactive term’s path to cognitive reactance was statistically significant (β= -.13, p <.05), a follow-up test plotted the two-way interaction effects by using regression coefficients of each variable (i.e., message type and alcohol involvement). As shown in Figure 4, when exposed to informative responsible drinking messages, heavier drinkers showed greater cognitive reactance to the alcohol responsibility message compared to lighter drinkers; however, when exposed to ambiguous messages, heavier drinkers showed significantly less cognitive reactance to the alcohol responsibility message than lighter drinkers. Therefore, H7a-b were supported. One additional interesting finding in this interaction effect should be noted; it seems that the reason there was an interaction effect was primarily because lighter drinkers found ambiguous messages to be too ambiguous to glean any concrete information, and they therefore showed greater cognitive reactance toward such strategically ambiguous messages, while heavier drinkers did not seem to cognitively take issue with the ambiguous campaign messages.
Aroused emotional reactance (i.e., anger) and cognitive reactance had negative impacts on attitudes toward the campaign message (i.e., responsible drinking) (β= -.19, p <.001, β= -.14, p <.001, respectively). Participants who expressed anger displayed more negative attitudes toward the campaign message, and participants who expressed greater cognitive reactance displayed more negative attitudes toward the campaign message, supporting H8 and H9. However, the aroused anger and cognitive reactance did not lead to more favorable attitudes toward drinking, answering RQ1. Given that informative messages stimulated more emotional reactance in general, and more cognitive reactance among heavier drinkers, the results indicate that there was no boomerang effect of informative messages at stimulating positive attitudes toward drinking mediated by psychological reactance. Regarding RQ2, attitudes toward the campaign messages were not necessarily impacted by participants’ intent to drink, while attitudes toward drinking positively engendered stronger drinking intent (β= .74, p <.001).
Discussion
This study examined how ambiguous messages (in comparison to informative messages) impact college students’ perception of their knowledge as well as the psychological reactance tendency, and subsequently how they influence the formation of attitudes and intent toward responsible drinking practices and alcohol consumption. How alcohol involvement level interacts with the type of messages was also examined. An online experiment with two conditions was conducted.
The findings indicate that when exposed to ambiguous messages, heavier drinkers reported that their perceived knowledge level was significantly higher than lighter drinkers, while exposure to the informative messages did not lead to such overconfident errors among heavier drinkers. In addition, as participants believed their knowledge level to be higher, they showed more positive attitudes toward drinking and stronger intent to drink. This indicates that the false perception of perceived knowledge caused by ambiguous messages, especially among heavy drinkers, directly influenced college students’ formation of more positive attitudes toward drinking and consequently engendered a greater intent to drink. That is, the study findings provide excellent empirical evidence supporting the notion that for heavier drinkers who may have naïve criterion for binge drinking, the suggestion of drinking responsibly in an ambiguous way functions as a cue to action - i.e., to drink responsibly. Previous studies have shown that the alcohol industry’s ambiguous responsible drinking messages do not have a positive impact on reducing harmful drinking (e.g.,Atkin et al., 2008; Dejong et al., 1992; Smith et al., 2006). This study extends this line of research by providing new empirical evidence that industry-sponsored messages not only carry little to no pro-health impact but indeed have the opposite effect; instead, they allow differing perceptions of alcohol responsibility and stimulate more positive attitudes and stronger intent in relation to drinking itself. Irrespective of how alcohol companies frame the true intentions behind responsible drinking campaigns (whether these adverse effects were unintended or intended), this study adds empirical findings as to their adverse impact to the existing body of literature, and raises serious ethical concerns that the industry’s responsible drinking campaigns are being employed as a marketing gimmick.
The findings also showed that informative messages that tend to be explicitly directive in nature created an increased level of emotional reactance among students regardless of their alcohol involvement. The increased level of emotional reactance (i.e., anger) engendered less favorable attitudes toward the campaign message itself, however, it did not impact students’ attitudes toward drinking or intent to drink. Although students appeared to be irritated or annoyed by the direct messages, it was not linked to any boomerang effects. In other words, students did not want to restore their restricted freedom by showing an increased desire to drink. Because college students perceive themselves as being capable and worthy of determining their own health outcomes (Miller et al., 2007), they may react to the informative messages with an increased level of emotional reactance, but the increased level of emotional reactance did not necessarily generate a stronger desire to drink. However, the escalated reactance reduced students’ favorable attitudes toward the message itself. Therefore, it is fair to conclude that this study did not find any evidence of boomerang effects of informative messages, though there is a slight chance that the escalated reactance can possibly reduce the effectiveness of such campaign messages. Respondents who were exposed to ambiguous messages displayed significantly lower emotional reactance compared to informative messages, as was anticipated. Lower emotional reactance induced by ambiguous messages led to more positive attitudes toward the campaign message; but because the ambiguous messages did not deliver any specific guidelines on alcohol responsibility, the positive attitudes toward the strategically ambiguous messages mean little. Also, heavier drinkers in general showed significantly greater anger toward the campaign message, as was expected.
When it comes to a cognitive reactance, heavier drinkers showed greater cognitive reactance to the informative alcohol responsibility message compared to lighter drinkers. However, when exposed to ambiguous messages, heavier drinkers showed significantly less cognitive reactance to the alcohol responsibility message than lighter drinkers. It seems that lighter drinkers found ambiguous messages to be too ambiguous to accept the message cognitively, and they therefore showed greater cognitive reactance toward ambiguous messages. Heavier drinkers did not seem to have any cognitive resistance against ambiguous campaign messages. These tendencies can be explained by the self-fulfilling prophecy and effects of over-confidence (Gilovich, 1991; Pallier et al., 2002); individuals tend to perceive and interpret given information to favor their personal beliefs or satisfaction. If participants interpreted responsible drinking messages as conforming to their personal beliefs due to ambiguity (e.g. light drinker - responsible drinking is the right thing to do, heavy drinker - as long as he/she drinks responsibly, drinking is not bad), it will not cause any cognitive reactance toward the messages. Further, it naturally follows that participants show more positive attitudes toward the campaigns. Like the effects of aroused anger, cognitive reactance did not lead to more favorable attitudes toward drinking or intent to drink, meaning no boomerang effects of psychological reactance were induced by informative messages.
These findings provide useful practical implications for public health advocates and scholars. One of the core reasons for testing physiological reactance is because there are inconsistent guidelines on using explicitly informative messages in public health campaigns. As discussed earlier, some scholars recommend using ambiguous messages for public health promotion messages for fear of the reactance tendency among young adults and the associated boomerang or backlash effects (e.g., Miller et al., 2007; Ringold, 2002). However, in the case of responsible drinking campaigns, it seems that an explicit, directive and informational message is much more likely to achieve pro-public health outcomes even if it may stimulate some level of reactance tendency, given that the tendency does not directly result in reducing message effectiveness. These findings further imply that the concept of strategic ambiguity proposed by Eisenberg (1984) is highly applicable in predicting young adults’ reactions to industry-sponsored campaigns. The reactance theory (Dillard & Shen, 2005; Smith, 1977) should be used with caution however, as this study shows relatively less utility in predicting reactions from young adults.
Lastly, attitudes toward the campaign messages were not necessarily impacted by participants’ intent to drink, while attitudes toward drinking positively engendered stronger drinking intent among participants. It is important to reemphasize that respondents showed higher levels of perceived knowledge, especially among heavier drinkers, when they were exposed to ambiguous messages. This indicates that existing strategically ambiguous campaigns by alcohol companies are largely ineffective at conveying public health messages, but greatly effective at promoting alcohol consumptions among college students.
While past studies evaluated the relationship between exposure to responsible drinking ads and youth perception of companies that promote such ads (e.g., Atkin et al., 2008; Hessari & Petticrew, 2018; Smith et al., 2006; Smith et al., 2014), little empirical evidence of the adverse impact on young adults has been documented. In addition, very few studies have examined the psychological processes or mechanisms that underlie the effects of alcohol responsibility ads on young adults’ pro-drinking perceptions or their practice of responsible drinking. By proposing two important factors (i.e., perceived knowledge and psychological reactance), this study fills the void and adds useful insight on the mechanisms of how strategically ambiguous messages create unintended (or intended) adverse impacts among college students when compared to informative messages. This study also shows the utility of the proposed theoretical model in explaining the impact of alcohol companies’ responsible drinking campaigns based on the strategic ambiguity theory (Eisenberg, 1984) and reactance theory (Dillard & Shen, 2005; Smith, 1977).
Smith et al. (2014) noted that responsible drinking messages have been used overwhelmingly to promote alcohol products, not to deliver public health messages. They concluded that existing responsibility messages by alcohol companies “should be supplemented by or replaced with prominently placed, externally developed, cognitively tested warnings that do not reinforce marketing messages” (p.168). This study also draws a similar conclusion in that alcohol industry’s messages fail to convey basic public health information and carry an undesirable impact on college students. The goal of responsible drinking campaigns in relation to excessive alcohol consumption should be to reduce alcohol abuse and alcohol-related problems (Atkin et al., 2008). Based on the strong empirical evidence of the adverse effects of ambiguous messages (i.e., increased desire to drink among students), public health advocates and scholars should use the study’s findings to propose more appropriate suggestions or regulations for the alcohol industry’s responsible drinking campaigns.
These theoretical and practical implications are particularly important given the rapid development of social media in recent years. Social media platforms provide alcohol companies and their advertisers an ability to directly communicate with young consumers at low cost. Not surprisingly, alcohol companies have been actively involved in product promotions and ad campaigns through various social media platforms to appeal to young adults (Griffin, Gavin, & Szmigin, 2018). Due to the highly interactive characteristics of social media, responsible drinking ads by alcohol companies would involve far more than simple message exposure (Griffin et al., 2018). Young adults might directly engage in the alcohol companies’ campaigns (e.g., picture sharing, answering quizzes) without realizing that they are contributing to the normalization of alcohol consumption according to the naïve criteria of drinking responsibly (Griffiths & Casswell, 2010). Given the scant attention received by alcohol companies’ campaigns on social media platforms (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, Instagram), future studies may extend the current research and explore their adverse impacts on young adults.
Despite valuable theoretical and practical implications, this study has its limitations. The study contains weaknesses that are common in experimental studies because of the artificiality of the experiment. The study’s participants are somewhat overrepresented by Caucasians and underrepresented by other ethnic groups. Different ethnic groups may have different drinking cultures and alcohol use tendencies (e.g., Cook et al., 2012). If ethnic drinking cultures differ significantly, greater insight may be achieved by considering the cultural and social processes of drinking among different ethnic groups, thereby extending the study’s findings. Future studies should consider using a survey method to enhance the external validity of the current study and explore other important factors in a more realistic setting. Also, the study assessed only the topic of responsible drinking to represent alcohol-related responsibility campaigns using print ads as stimuli. Further research should be conducted to examine various campaign messages other than those involving responsible or moderate drinking (e.g., underage drinking prevention), taking into consideration different communication platforms such as social media.
Because the creation of sophisticated or elaborate campaign messages to prevent emotional reactance was not the focus of this study, future studies may need to explore possible message designs. Further research will also need to explore possible ways to reduce college students’ psychological reactance against responsible drinking messages so that informative messages that can reduce reactance tendencies can be proposed to replace strategically ambiguous messages effectively.
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