Impact of Alcohol Health Messages in a Real-world Online Retail Setting

Summary

The goal of this between-participants parallel randomized controlled trial conducted in the Systembolaget mobile application is to investigate the impact of exposure to health messages on cognition and behaviour.

The primary study objective is to examine whether repeated exposure to rotating health warning messages in a mobile app where customers can purchase alcoholic beverages influences the number of purchased units of alcohol over the studied period.

The secondary objectives are to examine whether repeated exposure to health warning messages in a mobile app influences the number of alcoholic and non-alcoholic products purchased over the studied period, knowledge of alcohol-related harms, alcohol-related risk perceptions, emotional response to the message, engagement with the messages, behavioural intentions and self-reported behaviour of the study participants.

Users of the app providing informed consent for participation in the study will be assigned either to an experimental group, where they will be exposed to rotating messages describing health risks associated with alcohol designed in line with the existing Swedish regulation, or to a control group that will be exposed to messages reflecting existing industry practice.

The intervention will last for ten weeks, during which the recruited participants' data on product purchases in the app will be collected through in-app analytics. Both the number of alcoholic units and number of products purchased per session will be assessed and compared at the session level between the two groups. At the end of the intervention, participants will complete a short survey examining their knowledge, risk perceptions, emotional response, engagement with the messages, intentions and behaviour.

Conditions

• Behaviour Change
• Knowledge
• Risk Perception
• Emotional Response
• Message Perception
• Intentions
• Sales

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Health messages - existing Swedish legislation

Textual health warning messages currently mandated for use in printed alcohol advertisements under the Swedish Alcohol Ordinance, focusing on communicated various alcohol harms

BEHAVIORAL

Health messages - pictograms

Pictograms indicating no alcohol use during pregnancy and while driving

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Systembolaget

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• World Health Organization

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Dasa Kokole, PhD · World Health Organisation Regional Office for Europe

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

20 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-09-02

Primary Completion

2025-12-09

Completion

2025-12-09

Countries

• Sweden

Study Locations