Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Pictorial-Textual Health Warning Labels on Cigarette Packs in Terms of Social Marketing

Smoking negatively affects individuals’ health, and health problems caused by tobacco products are an important burden on the economy. Thus, struggle against cigarette is a topic of interest for governments. Turkish Health Ministry has mandated to place 14 different textual and pictorial health warnings (graphic warning label - GWL) on cigarette packs since 2010. However, the extent of GWLs effectiveness is not fully known. Therefore, this research aims to investigate 14 GWLs in terms of their effectiveness. During research, participators were asked to evaluate each GWL which they considered effective; the most effective 3 GWLs were determined by frequency analysis. Besides, the relations between the most effective 3 GWLs, gender, age and smoking levels were tested. Results revealed that the fact that GWLs were considered effective is not independent of gender and smoking levels. In this respect, the amount of female participants who considered GWLs as effective was proportionately higher than male respondents. In a similar vein, along with the decrease in smoking frequency, more respondents indicated that GWLs are effective. However, findings illustrated that there was no relation between age and the fact that whether GWLs are perceived as effective.