Dosage Effects of Anti-prescription Opioid Risk Narratives, Prescription Opioid Misuse Experience, Risk Perceptions, and Message Processing

An online experiment was conducted among a convenience sample of non-Hispanic young Black and White Americans to test the dosage effects of anti-prescription opioid risk narratives (i.e., receiving zero, one, or two different narratives) on negative attitudes toward prescription opioids and intentions to avoid misusing prescription opioids while considering the mediating role of risk perceptions and the moderating role of prescription opioid misuse experience. The study also investigated how the misuse experience may affect risk narrative processing. It detected positive dosage effects on risk perceptions and negative attitudes as well as significant indirect positive dosage effects on the attitudes and behavioral intentions via risk perceptions. Further analysis showed that these positive effects existed only among participants with little experience of misusing prescription opioids. Those with some misuse experience were inclined to engage in defensive processing of the narratives. These findings have a number of theoretical and practical implications.