Peer Signals and “Judgement-Free” Messaging: Reframing Norms and Control in Young Adults’ Smoking Cessation

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_112How to use a DOI?

Keywords

young adults; Theory of Planned Behaviour; judgement-free messaging

Abstract

Young adults’ nicotine use increasingly spans both cigarettes and e-cigarettes, complicating cessation and reshaping how social cues and platform logics influence health decisions. While the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) highlights attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control as drivers of behavioural intentions, tobacco communication often merges these levers without clarifying how peer signals and judgement-free messaging operate in algorithmically mediated environments. This paper adopts a qualitatively led mixed-methods design to explore how digital cues - such as like counts, comment tone, and influencer framing - together with empathetic, non-judgemental language, reframe social norms and perceived control in young adults’ cessation sense-making. Integrating TPB with media socialisation theory and relational dialectics, it develops a framework for understanding the tensions between safety and authenticity, and between autonomy and conformity. A purposive interview sample of twenty young adults aged eighteen to twenty-four will be paired with a survey of approximately two hundred respondents to contextualise normative perceptions, perceived behavioural control, and future-self continuity. The analysis isolates normative and efficacy levers without claiming causality, proposing that judgement-free messaging enhances perceived control while peer signals recalibrate subjective norms, particularly among dual users and socially situated smokers. The findings are expected to inform message design and platform-based evaluation strategies for campus and social-media health campaigns.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial 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 license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ruoheng Yang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - Peer Signals and “Judgement-Free” Messaging: Reframing Norms and Control in Young Adults’ Smoking Cessation
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Culture, Design and Social Development (CDSD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1006
EP  - 1013
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_112
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_112
ID  - Yang2026
ER  -