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Cigarette product undoubtedly has negative health consequences, especially for adolescent. Although there is growing literature on peer’s positive social influence as a preventive action, but it is unclear how they react when convinced by the truth of the negative health consequence. This experimental study aims to examine the impact of negative health consequence on adolescent emotions and behavior. Through online invitation and randomization process, 78 high school students from South Sumatera Province, Indonesia were eligible to participated on an online experimental study. We compared two groups (experimental vs. control) to examine the impact of negative health consequence on their emotions (empathy) and their behavior (prosocial behavior). Our analysis reveal that, compared with non-convincing health message condition (n=40), adolescents with convincing negative health messages condition (n=38), have more high empathy (sign=0.005) and prosocial behavior (sign=0.028) to help their smoking peers. Our findings provide a valuable information to sustainability development in the future through reducing underage smokers. We suggest that the use of convincing method to develop a school-based social marketing program for handling adolescent smoking problem.

negative health consequence; social marketing; adolescent smoking prevention program; positive peer influence; emotions; empathy; prosocial behavior