Web-based social marketing for quitting drug abuse

Abstract

For many reasons, specially perceived social risks or prosecution, addicted people who try to voluntary quite drug abuse, usually use the Internet to find appropriate information, websites, therapeutic and addiction treatment centers. So, using appropriate web-based interventions are necessary. So, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of web-based social marketing interventions developed by Doshi et al. (2003) on self-efficacy, as one of the main beliefs that influence people's intentions and behaviors are based on theory of Planned Behavior. An online questionnaire was designed based on Doshi’s developed scales and was put on the 8 websites of addiction treatment centers. Finally, 304 questionnaires were gathered and data analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Results showed that three web-based social marketing interventions – knowledge, cognitive strategies and therapeutic interventions – had significant and positive effect on Self-Efficacy, while two other interventions – behavioral strategies and emotion-focused strategies – did not have significant effect on self-efficacy. Also, self-efficacy influences intention and so, intention can significantly affect target behavior – attending to therapeutic centers to quit drug abuse. Social marketing researches considered vast issues, but few of them concentrate on internet strategies, web-based interventions and its impact on behavior change. So, findings of this research enable the addiction treatment centers to improve their websites’ effectiveness and to motivate addicted individuals to attend in the addiction treatment centers.