The results are encouraging. This investigation found that inoculation could successfully protect college students against credit card advertisements, protecting their healthy attitudes about credit card debt, influencing some behavioral intentions, and influencing word-of-mouth communication about credit card debt.

Josh Compton & Michael Pfau

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0090988042000276014

Student credit card debt is a growing problem. This study explores the effectiveness of the inoculation strategy to foster resistance to credit card marketing targeting college students. In order to explore further the medical analogy on which the inoculation strategy is based, this study was the first systematically to alter the argument strength of both the counterarguments and refutations in the inoculation pretreatment message to determine whether argument strengths impact effectiveness of inoculation treatments. In addition, this investigation explored whether inoculation spreads from person to person via social channels, similar to the marketing concept of viral marketing. Results indicated that conventional inoculation treatment messages successfully inoculated college students against credit card advertisements, manifested in attitude valence and behavioral intentions, and that matching argument strength is the most effective inoculation strategy.

Compton, J., & Pfau, M. (2004). Use of inoculation to foster resistance to credit card marketing targeting college students. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 32, 343-364. https://doi.org/10.1080/0090988042000276014