Impact of social media advertisements on eating disorders

This thesis examines the effects of social media advertisements, especially those promoting healthy foods, on consumer attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. The study also considers how eating disorder symptoms moderate these relationships. The research integrates both cognitive and emotional factors and includes data from two countries: Turkey and the United States. A total of 281 valid survey responses were collected and analyzed separately for each country. The results show that social media ad value is a strong predictor of positive attitudes toward healthy food promotions in both samples. While hedonic and utilitarian values had weaker effects, attitude significantly influenced both behavioral intention and consumer response, especially in the Turkish sample. Eating disorder symptoms moderated the relationship between social media ad value and attitude. This suggests a possible emotional or cognitive distancing from food-related content among at-risk individuals. These findings offer practical implications for digital marketing and health communication. They highlight the need for more sensitive and trustworthy messaging, especially when targeting consumers who may be psychologically vulnerable to food-related content.