Tobacco Price Hikes and Smoking Cessation: Examining Usefulness of the Cessation Price Survey in the JHPS2010
This paper examines the responses of 875 individuals to the JHPS 2010 question, “At what price would you quit smoking?” The paper investigates how consistent the obtained cessation prices are with their smoking behavior as cigarette prices subsequently rose. We find that only 10 to 20% of the respondents took actions in a consistent manner with their cessation prices in the subsequent 10 years. Our probit analyses show that their cessation prices fail to predict their cessations, while their actions, such as smoking behaviors in the previous year and the number of cigarettes smoked per day, do predict. This deficient performance is likely caused by measurement errors due to self-reporting: their cessation prices may not sufficiently reflect their nicotine dependence, in particular. Some measures to correct this point may be necessary to improve the usefulness of the cessation price question.
