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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

James Thrasher, PhD, MS¹, David Hammond, PhD², K. Michael Cummings, PhD MPH³, Geoffrey T. Fong, PhD², Mark Zanna, PhD², Gerard Hastings, PhD⁴, and Abraham Brown, MA⁴. (1) Institute for Health Research & Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1741 West Roosevelt Road, Suite 558, Chicago, IL 60608, 919-338-1438, thrasher@uic.edu, (2) Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada, (3) Department of Health Behavior, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences, Elm and Carlton Streets, Buffalo, NY 14263, (4) Institute for Social Marketing, University of Stirling, Centre for Tobacco Control Research, Stirling, Scotland, FK9 4LA, United Kingdom

Both conceptual clarity and empirical studies are needed to understand how tobacco policies influence smoking behavior by changing smoking-related norms. The present study examined smokers' normative perceptions of three targets: tobacco products, smoking behavior, and the tobacco industry. It was hypothesized that: 1) noticing warning labels primarily influences perceptions of tobacco products as dangerous; 2) smoking bans primarily influence perceived social acceptability of smoking; and 3) receiving industry promotions primarily influences perceptions of the tobacco industry as deceitful. Structural equation modeling methods tested simultaneous influences from each policy domain on all three normative targets and from these targets to quitting intentions and behavior. Data were drawn from representative samples of adult smokers from Canada (n=2,114), the US (n=2,138), the UK (n=2,401), and Australia (n=2,305), with 8 month follow-up. Bi-variate analyses and final adjusted models mostly support the hypotheses. The path from smoking bans to social acceptability (b=0.07) appeared slightly stronger than its path to perceptions of either tobacco products (b=0.04) or the tobacco industry (n.s.). The only statistically significant path from noticing warning labels was to normative perceptions of tobacco products (b=0.11). Receiving tobacco industry promotions was unrelated to any normative target. Path estimates were consistent across models with quitting intentions or follow-up quit behavior as the distal outcome. However, whereas all paths from normative domains to quitting intentions were statistically significant, only normative perceptions of tobacco products predicted quitting behavior. These results suggest how different tobacco control policies exert their effects on perceived norms and quitting intentions and behavior.

Learning Objectives:

• section organizer said that we only needed them for the session abstract...

Keywords: Tobacco Policy, Evaluation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No