Smokers are exposed to various influences that may encourage or discourage quitting. The broad goal of the proposed project is to examine whether individual smoking cessation decisions are influenced by: smoking cessation product and anti-smoking public service advertisements in magazines and on television; cigarette advertisements in magazines; and smoking-related news articles in magazines. The project has four specific aims.
Specific Aim 1 is to broaden and further develop an existing media archive of smoking-related magazine advertisements. We propose to include competitive media reports data on smoking-related advertisements on television and to collect and append new data on smoking-related news articles in magazines. Moreover, we will expand the data base by conducting content analysis to measure various features of these advertisements, including the specific warning labels that appear in cigarette advertisements in magazines.
Specific Aim 2 is to merge data from the media archive with individual-level survey data on smoking cessation behavior. Because of the unique advantages of the individual-level survey data, we will be able to use information on respondents' magazine-reading and television-viewing habits to create measure of their potential exposure to smoking-related advertisements and news articles.
Specific Aim 3 is to estimate an econometric model of the impact of smoking-related advertisements and news articles on individual smoking cessation behavior. The results from this model will allow us to test policy-relevant hypotheses about the determinants of smoking cessation.
Specific Aim 4 is to conduct two pilot studies: one to estimate an econometric model of the factors that determine whether and how many smoking-related advertisements appear in a magazine; another to estimate whether cigarette manufactures systematically vary which of four required warning labels appear on advertisements. These pilot studies aim to investigate whether advertisers strategically choose the number and/or content of smoking-related advertisements based on a magazine's tobacco related editorial content and readership demographics.
