Effects of paid partnership disclosures on responses to oral nicotine pouch advertising: a randomized psychophysiological study of oral nicotine pouch use-status.

OBJECTIVE: Social media marketing of oral nicotine pouches (ONPs) has expanded rapidly since their U.S. introduction in 2016, particularly among young adults. It remains unclear whether ONP use-status influences cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to influencer-generated ONP marketing, including ONP interest and comparative harm perceptions. METHODS: A 2 (ONP use-status: people who use ONPs vs. people who do not use ONPs) x 2 (paid partnership disclosure: present vs. absent) between-participants experiment was conducted with young adults (N = 193; Mage = 20.19 years). Participants viewed a TikTok influencer advertisement promoting ONPs while psychophysiological responses were recorded, followed by self-report measures. RESULTS: Paid partnership disclosures increased ONP interest among both people who use ONPs and people who do not use ONPs (p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.07), with people who use ONPs reporting greater overall interest than people who do not use ONPs (p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.53). Controlling for baseline comparative harm perceptions, disclosure effects varied by baseline comparative harm perceptions and ONP use-status (p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.14). Compared with people who do not use ONPs, people who use ONPs allocated fewer cognitive resources to the ONP advertisements over time (b = 0.01, p = 0.03), exhibited greater physiological arousal over time (b = 0.0084, p = 0.04), and showed less negative emotional responding when disclosures were present (b = -0.53, p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Paid partnership disclosures increased ONP interest but produced divergent effects on comparative harm perceptions, cognitive processing, physiological arousal, and emotional responding according to ONP use-status.