College of Business

This research examines consumers’ current level of sun protection knowledge and prevention, tanning motivation, and behavior. This baseline information provides a clearer understanding of actual consumer behavior and can be used to determine what knowledge deficits exist so that future research, educational materials, and communication efforts can be tailored to address those more directly. Additionally,the relationships between knowledge, self-esteem, and narcissism are explored. Results show that knowledge has no impact on addictive tanning behavior, self-esteem is negatively correlated, and narcissism is fully mediated by appearance motivation. Implications, potential regulatory, and communication efforts are discussed.

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