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The impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment

BACKGROUND: Smartphone apps are increasingly used for health-related behaviour change and people discover apps through different sources. However, it is unclear whether users differ by mode of app discovery. Drink Less is an alcohol reduction app that received national media coverage in the UK cause...

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Autores principales: Garnett, Claire, Perski, Olga, Beard, Emma, Michie, Susan, West, Robert, Brown, Jamie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7789329/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33407283
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-10011-0
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author Garnett, Claire
Perski, Olga
Beard, Emma
Michie, Susan
West, Robert
Brown, Jamie
author_facet Garnett, Claire
Perski, Olga
Beard, Emma
Michie, Susan
West, Robert
Brown, Jamie
author_sort Garnett, Claire
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Smartphone apps are increasingly used for health-related behaviour change and people discover apps through different sources. However, it is unclear whether users differ by mode of app discovery. Drink Less is an alcohol reduction app that received national media coverage in the UK caused by celebrity influence (a male TV and radio national broadcaster, aged 51). Our aim was to compare users who discovered the app before and after this coverage. METHODS: A natural experiment assessing the impact of media coverage of Drink Less on users’ socio-demographic and drinking characteristics, app engagement levels, and extent of alcohol reduction. The study period was from 17th May 2017 to 23rd January 2019, with media coverage starting on 21st August 2018. Users were 18 years or over, based in the UK and interested in drinking less. Interrupted time series analyses using Generalised Additive Mixed Models were conducted for each outcome variable aggregated at the weekly level. RESULTS: In 66 weeks prior to the media coverage, 8617 users downloaded the app and 18,959 in 23 weeks afterwards. There was a significant step-level increase in users’ mean age (B = 8.17, p < .001) and a decrease in the percentage of female users (B = -27.71, p < .001), though these effects dissipated non-linearly over time. No effect of media coverage was detected on employment type or on the percentage of at-risk drinkers, though the mean Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test score was lower after the media coverage (B = -1.43, p = .031). There was a step-level increase in app engagement – number of sessions (B = 3.45, p = .038) and number of days used (B = 2.30, p = .005) – which continued to increase over time following quadratic trends. CONCLUSIONS: Celebrity influence leading to national media coverage in the UK of the Drink Less app was associated with more people downloading the app who were male, older and engaged with the app; and did not appear to impact employment inequality. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-020-10011-0.
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spelling pubmed-77893292021-01-07 The impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment Garnett, Claire Perski, Olga Beard, Emma Michie, Susan West, Robert Brown, Jamie BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Smartphone apps are increasingly used for health-related behaviour change and people discover apps through different sources. However, it is unclear whether users differ by mode of app discovery. Drink Less is an alcohol reduction app that received national media coverage in the UK caused by celebrity influence (a male TV and radio national broadcaster, aged 51). Our aim was to compare users who discovered the app before and after this coverage. METHODS: A natural experiment assessing the impact of media coverage of Drink Less on users’ socio-demographic and drinking characteristics, app engagement levels, and extent of alcohol reduction. The study period was from 17th May 2017 to 23rd January 2019, with media coverage starting on 21st August 2018. Users were 18 years or over, based in the UK and interested in drinking less. Interrupted time series analyses using Generalised Additive Mixed Models were conducted for each outcome variable aggregated at the weekly level. RESULTS: In 66 weeks prior to the media coverage, 8617 users downloaded the app and 18,959 in 23 weeks afterwards. There was a significant step-level increase in users’ mean age (B = 8.17, p < .001) and a decrease in the percentage of female users (B = -27.71, p < .001), though these effects dissipated non-linearly over time. No effect of media coverage was detected on employment type or on the percentage of at-risk drinkers, though the mean Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test score was lower after the media coverage (B = -1.43, p = .031). There was a step-level increase in app engagement – number of sessions (B = 3.45, p = .038) and number of days used (B = 2.30, p = .005) – which continued to increase over time following quadratic trends. CONCLUSIONS: Celebrity influence leading to national media coverage in the UK of the Drink Less app was associated with more people downloading the app who were male, older and engaged with the app; and did not appear to impact employment inequality. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-020-10011-0. BioMed Central 2021-01-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7789329/ /pubmed/33407283 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-10011-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Garnett, Claire
Perski, Olga
Beard, Emma
Michie, Susan
West, Robert
Brown, Jamie
The impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment
title The impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment
title_full The impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment
title_fullStr The impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment
title_full_unstemmed The impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment
title_short The impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment
title_sort impact of celebrity influence and national media coverage on users of an alcohol reduction app: a natural experiment
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7789329/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33407283
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-10011-0
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