Trial reportApplied psychology. Health and well-being2023
Applying persuasive messages to reduce public outdoor smoking: A pseudo-randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in Applied psychology. Health and well-being, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of social norms messaging approaches for improving health behaviours in developed countries.Nature human behaviour · 2025Pooled it
- Understanding the mechanisms of change in social norms around tobacco use: A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Applying persuasive messages to reduce public outdoor smoking: A pseudo-randomized controlled trial.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2023Trial
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite efforts to create dedicated smoking areas and no-smoking signs, many smokers continue to light their cigarettes in front of public building entrances-leading to concerns over health consequences for non-smokers passing by. To increase compliance with no-smoking requests, behavioral interventions that tap into habitual and automatic processes seem promising. A pseudo-randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the differential impact of seven behavioral interventions based on Cialdini's principles of persuasion. Over a period of 9 weeks, the number of smokers was counted (total n = 17,930 observations) in front of a German University Medical Center. Relative to a baseline and a control condition, interventions based on the principles of reciprocity, scarcity, and authority were most effective in reducing the number of observed smokers in front of the building entrance (41.5%, 45.7%, and 52.1% reduction rates, respectively). Having observed smokers' behavior in vivo, this study provides substantial evidence for the impact of persuasive strategies on outdoor smoking. In the future, this knowledge should be used to protect non-smokers from second-hand smoke by increasing the use of designated smoking areas, leave to another place to smoke, or not smoke at all.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.