Constructing expert models of adolescent vaping behaviour: A mental models study

An expert-derived mental model of adolescent vaping behaviour in Norway links initiation, enabling drivers, and reinforcement to interacting biological, psychological, and social factors across multiple system levels.

• Why it matters: Prevention research has focused mainly on adolescents’ perceptions, leaving experts’ conceptualisations of risk mechanisms and uncertainties underexplored for evidence-based communication.
• What they did: Semi-structured interviews with 12 Norwegian experts across medical research, addiction science, public health prevention, and adolescent-oriented practice were analysed using the mental models approach to risk communication.
• The result: Experts describe vaping as socially embedded and often intermittent, sustained through interacting social, structural, commercial, and regulatory drivers, and reinforced by nicotine dependence and emotional coping, implying comparative risk framings and peer-culture functions matter for risk communication.

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