Behavioral Intervention to Mitigate Nicotine Addiction in Digital Environments

Smoking remains highly prevalent among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, where nicotine addiction is particularly stubborn despite conventional treatment approaches. This project proposes a behavioral intervention to mitigate nicotine addiction by testing evidence-based strategies within a rigorously recruited sample of smokers. The research focuses on users of flavored combusted tobacco products and aims to evaluate the impact of message characteristics on smoking cessation-related outcomes. A multi-phase approach will be used, beginning with qualitative methods and co-creation workshops to develop message content tailored for digital platforms. These messages will then be evaluated through an eye-tracking study and a discrete choice experiment to quantify how users respond to specific message attributes. Finally, a randomized clinical trial (RCT) will test the effects of these messages on behavioral outcomes among a nationally representative sample of individual tobacco users. The proposed work is an individual-level behavioral intervention designed to improve tobacco education efficacy among participants. By examining how targeted intervention components influence the intention to quit smoking and related cessation behaviors, this project will generate insights that inform clinical practice guidelines for smoking cessation among people who smoke.