Balancing Risks and Benefits: How Disclosure Specificity and Message Sidedness Shape Consumer Responses to Patient Influencer Pharmaceutical Advertising

Nathaniel Evans, Amy Ni (Grady Masters student), Erin Willis, and Haoyue Xiang (Grady Ph.D. student), “Balancing Risks and Benefits: How Disclosure Specificity and Message Sidedness Shape Consumer Responses to Patient Influencer Pharmaceutical Advertising”. Paper Accepted to the American Academy of Advertising Annual Conference, Austin, March 26-29, 2026.  Abstract: Given forthcoming FDA regulatory action concerning DTC pharmaceutical advertising in social media and influencer contexts, the current study conducts a between-subjects online experiment testing the impact of advertising disclosure specificity (low vs. medium vs. high) and risk disclosure sidedness (one-sided benefit vs. two-sided balanced) on consumers’ ability to recognize patient influencer DTC advertising and how such recognition affects subsequent evaluations and intentions toward DTC drugs and pharmaceutical companies. Findings indicate that risk disclosure sidedness significantly moderates the indirect effect of disclosure specificity through advertising recognition and message credibility such that the presence of a one-sided benefit risk disclosure produces significantly more negative effects on GLP-1 related intentions, GLP-1 trust, GLP-1 attitudes, and trust in pharmaceutical company compared to a two-sided balanced risk disclosure. These findings offer significant theoretical, managerial, and policy related insights.