Marketing awareness, professional experience, and support for e-cigarette advertising regulation among polish legal professionals: a latent-class analysis

TL;DR

This study explores how Polish legal professionals' awareness of e-cigarette marketing influences their support for advertising regulations, finding that professional experience, not marketing awareness, is a key factor.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel use of latent-class analysis to segment marketing awareness and identify correlates of regulatory attitudes among legal professionals.

Findings

Marketing awareness was not significantly linked to support for advertising regulation.

Professional experience over 10 years increased support for regulation.

Corporate sector employment decreased support for regulation.

Abstract

To examine whether marketing awareness – operationalized as recognition of e-cigarette advertising persuasiveness – relates to support for advertising regulation among Polish legal professionals, and to identify sociodemographic and occupational correlates of regulatory attitudes.

Cross-sectional survey of 471 legal professionals in Poland. Latent class analysis identified 3 marketing awareness segments based on 5 perception indicators. The 3-class solution (Bayesian information criterion = 3121.23, entropy = 0.941) distinguished low (38.5%), moderate (47.0%), and high (14.5%) awareness groups. Binary logistic regression modeled support for advertising regulation (“yes” vs. “not-yes”), with awareness class membership and covariates (age, experience, sector, profession) as predictors.

The relationship between marketing awareness and regulatory support could not be established (moderate awareness: odds ratio [OR] = 1.67, 95% CI: 0.99–2.81, p = 0.054; high awareness: OR = 1.82, 95% CI: 0.85–3.90, p = 0.125). Professional experience >10 years (OR = 3.22, 95% CI: 1.02–10.20, p = 0.047) and corporate sector employment (OR = 0.53, 95% CI: 0.30–0.94, p = 0.030) were the only significant predictors.

This exploratory study could not determine whether marketing awareness relates to regulatory support among legal professionals. Professional experience emerged as the primary correlate, suggesting regulatory attitudes may be shaped by professional socialization. Policy efforts should prioritize enforcement of existing restrictions and professional education for early-career practitioners.

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