Background:
Policies encouraging healthy behaviours are often strongly opposed by well-funded industry groups. As public support is crucial for policy change, public health advocates need to be equipped with strategies to offset the impact of anti-policy messages.
Aim:
To investigate the effectiveness of theory-based public health advocacy messages in generating support for alcohol/sugary drink policies (increased taxes; sport sponsorship bans) and improving resistance to subsequent anti-policy messages typical of the alcohol/sugary drink industry.
Methods:
We conducted a randomised online experiment assigning Australian adults (n=6,000) to one of four advocacy messages or a control arm. The four advocacy message conditions presented a standard pro-policy argument alone or combined with an inoculation message (forewarning and directly refuting anti-policy arguments from the opposition), a narrative message (a short, personal story about an individual’s experience of the health issue), or a composite inoculation and narrative message. Around two weeks later, we re-contacted participants (n=3,285) and exposed them to an industry anti-policy message. Generalised linear models tested for differences between conditions in policy support and anti-industry beliefs at both time points.
Results:
Only the standard argument plus narrative message increased policy support relative to control at time 1. The standard argument plus narrative and standard argument plus inoculation messages were most consistently effective at increasing resistance to the persuasive impact of anti-policy messages relative to control at time 2.
Conclusion:
These research findings highlight the value of designing studies to replicate the real-world competitive messaging environment surrounding health policy issues. Specifically, important message effects can be overlooked when focusing solely on the immediate effects of exposure to advocacy messages. There is promising evidence that dissemination of advocacy messages that use inoculation or narrative strategies can make the public more resistant to future efforts at persuasion by industry groups.