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Using Serious Games for Antismoking Health Campaigns: Experimental Study
BACKGROUND: Serious games for health have been gaining in popularity among scholars and practitioners. However, there remain a few questions to be addressed. OBJECTIVE: This study tests the effects of a serious game and fear appeals on smoking-related outcomes. More specifically, this research aims...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
JMIR Publications
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744263/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33263549 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/18528 |
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author | Kim, Jihyun Song, Hayeon Merrill Jr, Kelly Jung, Younbo Kwon, Remi Junghuem |
author_facet | Kim, Jihyun Song, Hayeon Merrill Jr, Kelly Jung, Younbo Kwon, Remi Junghuem |
author_sort | Kim, Jihyun |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Serious games for health have been gaining in popularity among scholars and practitioners. However, there remain a few questions to be addressed. OBJECTIVE: This study tests the effects of a serious game and fear appeals on smoking-related outcomes. More specifically, this research aims to understand how serious games function as a more effective vehicle for a health campaign than a traditional medium, such as a print-based pamphlet. Further, while serious games utilize a variety of persuasive strategies in the game’s content, it is not clear whether fear appeals, which are widely used persuasive-message strategies for health, can be an effective strategy in serious games. Thus, we are testing the effect of fear appeals in a serious game. METHODS: We created a computer game and a print brochure to educate participants about the risks of smoking. More specifically, a flash-based single-player game was developed in which players were asked to avoid cigarettes in the gameplay context. We also developed an online brochure based on existing smoking-related brochures at a university health center; antismoking messages on the computer game and in the brochure were comparable. Then, an experiment using a 2 (media type: game vs. print) x 2 (fearful image: fear vs. no-fear) between-subjects design was conducted. The study recruitment was announced to undergraduate students enrolled in a large, public Midwestern university in the United States. After a screening test, a total of 72 smokers, who reported smoking in the past 30 days, participated in the experiment. RESULTS: Overall, gameplay, when compared to print-based pamphlets, had greater impacts on attitudes toward smoking and the intention to quit smoking. Further, the game’s persuasive effects were especially pronounced when messages contained fear appeals. When fearful images were presented, participants in the game condition reported significantly more negative attitudes toward social smoking than those in the print condition [F(1,67)=7.28; P=.009; η(p(2))=0.10]. However, in the no-fear condition, there was no significant difference between the conditions [F(1,67)=0.25; P=.620]. Similarly, the intention to quit smoking [F(1,67)=4.64; P=.035; η(p(2))=0.07] and susceptibility [F(1,67)=6.92; P=.011; η(p(2))=0.09] were also significantly different between the conditions, but only when fear appeals were used. CONCLUSIONS: This study extends fear appeal research by investigating the effects of different media types. It offers empirical evidence that a serious game can be an effective vehicle for fear appeals. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7744263 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | JMIR Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77442632020-12-18 Using Serious Games for Antismoking Health Campaigns: Experimental Study Kim, Jihyun Song, Hayeon Merrill Jr, Kelly Jung, Younbo Kwon, Remi Junghuem JMIR Serious Games Original Paper BACKGROUND: Serious games for health have been gaining in popularity among scholars and practitioners. However, there remain a few questions to be addressed. OBJECTIVE: This study tests the effects of a serious game and fear appeals on smoking-related outcomes. More specifically, this research aims to understand how serious games function as a more effective vehicle for a health campaign than a traditional medium, such as a print-based pamphlet. Further, while serious games utilize a variety of persuasive strategies in the game’s content, it is not clear whether fear appeals, which are widely used persuasive-message strategies for health, can be an effective strategy in serious games. Thus, we are testing the effect of fear appeals in a serious game. METHODS: We created a computer game and a print brochure to educate participants about the risks of smoking. More specifically, a flash-based single-player game was developed in which players were asked to avoid cigarettes in the gameplay context. We also developed an online brochure based on existing smoking-related brochures at a university health center; antismoking messages on the computer game and in the brochure were comparable. Then, an experiment using a 2 (media type: game vs. print) x 2 (fearful image: fear vs. no-fear) between-subjects design was conducted. The study recruitment was announced to undergraduate students enrolled in a large, public Midwestern university in the United States. After a screening test, a total of 72 smokers, who reported smoking in the past 30 days, participated in the experiment. RESULTS: Overall, gameplay, when compared to print-based pamphlets, had greater impacts on attitudes toward smoking and the intention to quit smoking. Further, the game’s persuasive effects were especially pronounced when messages contained fear appeals. When fearful images were presented, participants in the game condition reported significantly more negative attitudes toward social smoking than those in the print condition [F(1,67)=7.28; P=.009; η(p(2))=0.10]. However, in the no-fear condition, there was no significant difference between the conditions [F(1,67)=0.25; P=.620]. Similarly, the intention to quit smoking [F(1,67)=4.64; P=.035; η(p(2))=0.07] and susceptibility [F(1,67)=6.92; P=.011; η(p(2))=0.09] were also significantly different between the conditions, but only when fear appeals were used. CONCLUSIONS: This study extends fear appeal research by investigating the effects of different media types. It offers empirical evidence that a serious game can be an effective vehicle for fear appeals. JMIR Publications 2020-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7744263/ /pubmed/33263549 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/18528 Text en ©Jihyun Kim, Hayeon Song, Kelly Merrill Jr, Younbo Jung, Remi Junghuem Kwon. Originally published in JMIR Serious Games (http://games.jmir.org), 02.12.2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Serious Games, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://games.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Kim, Jihyun Song, Hayeon Merrill Jr, Kelly Jung, Younbo Kwon, Remi Junghuem Using Serious Games for Antismoking Health Campaigns: Experimental Study |
title | Using Serious Games for Antismoking Health Campaigns: Experimental Study |
title_full | Using Serious Games for Antismoking Health Campaigns: Experimental Study |
title_fullStr | Using Serious Games for Antismoking Health Campaigns: Experimental Study |
title_full_unstemmed | Using Serious Games for Antismoking Health Campaigns: Experimental Study |
title_short | Using Serious Games for Antismoking Health Campaigns: Experimental Study |
title_sort | using serious games for antismoking health campaigns: experimental study |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744263/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33263549 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/18528 |
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