Social Media Campaign Effects: Moderating Role of Social Capital in an Anti-Smoking Campaign.

This study examined the effects of an anti-smoking campaign that employs a crowdsourcing method with a social networking service. Drawing upon social capital scholarship and the expression effect research paradigm in eHealth systems, the study also investigated the roles of social trust and community life satisfaction in the social media campaign that has a specific geographical boundary. To that end, we conducted an experiment using a two-group pretest-posttest design. We randomly assigned 201 participants to two conditions: "campaign message reception only" as a control group and "message reception and expression" as a treatment group in which participants fully engaged in the campaign process by sharing their own campaign ideas with other participants. Findings revealed that social trust and community life satisfaction interacted with the treatment condition to positively affect persuasive intentions, but in distinct ways. Social trust moderated the effect of the message reception and interaction condition on participants' willingness to encourage community members to stop smoking. In contrast, community life satisfaction moderated the effect of the treatment condition on encouraging others to comply with the community's anti-smoking policy. These results provide theoretical and practical implications related to the roles of social capital in geographically defined social media campaigns.

Communication, Reasoning, and Planned Behaviors: Unveiling the Effect of Interactive Communication in an Anti-Smoking Social Media Campaign.

This study examines direct and indirect effects of interactive communication in an antismoking social media campaign. To that end, we pose a multitheoretical framework that integrates communication mediation models and the Theory of Planned Behavior. To test the theorized model, we conducted an experiment using a two-group pretest-posttest design. Participants (N = 201) were randomly assigned into two experimental conditions: "campaign message reception only" as a control group and "message reception and social interaction" as a treatment group, in which the participants contributed to the antismoking campaign by posting their own campaign ideas and information they found through mediated and interpersonal communication. The findings show that interactive communication catalyzes the participants' information searching behaviors through diverse communication channels. In turn, increased media use plays a crucial role in changing their attitudes and perceived social norms about smoking behaviors, and eventually reducing smoking intention. This study affirms that the theory of planned behavior is effective in predicting behavioral intention and demonstrates the usefulness of a multitheoretical approach in interactive campaign research on social media.