Behavioral economic measurement of cigarette demand: A descriptive review of published approaches to the cigarette purchase task.

Abstract

The Cigarette Purchase Task (CPT) is a behavioral economic method for assessing demand for cigarettes. Growing interest in behavioral correlates of tobacco use in clinical and general populations as well as empirical efforts to inform policy has seen an increase in published articles employing the CPT. Accordingly, an examination of the published methods and procedures for obtaining these behavioral economic metrics is timely. The purpose of this investigation was to provide a review of published approaches to using the CPT. We searched specific Boolean operators (["behavioral economic" AND "purchase task"] OR ["demand" AND "cigarette"]) and identified 49 empirical articles published through the year 2018 that reported administering a CPT. Articles were coded for participant characteristics (e.g., sample size, population type, age), CPT task structure (e.g., price framing, number and sequence of prices; vignettes, contextual factors), and data analytic approach (e.g., method of generating indices of cigarette demand). Results of this review indicate no standard approach to administering the CPT and underscore the need for replicability of these behavioral economic measures for the purpose of guiding clinical and policy decisions.

Relating individual differences in nicotine dependence severity to underpinning motivational and pharmacological processes among smokers from vulnerable populations

“…The present results further demonstrate the utility of the CPT for providing a detailed, quantitative characterization of the relative reinforcing value of smoking (i.e., smoking motivation) (Gonzalez-Roz et al, 2019;Reed et al, 2020;Zvorsky et al, 2019). Consistent with prior studies in adolescent (Bidwell et al, 2012) and adult smokers (Gonzalez-Roz et al, 2020;O'Connor et al, 2016), the five conventional CPT indices reduced to two latent factors.…”

“…The CPT task has participants estimate how many cigarettes they would smoke in a 24-hr period across escalating hypothetical prices (Jacobs & Bickel, 1999). Prior studies have shown that results are functionally congruent across versions where participants consume purchased cigarettes and the hypothetical version used in the present study where participants simply estimate consumption (Nighbor et al, 2020;Wilson et al, 2016). Participants were instructed to imagine making purchases in a context where they have (a) the same income/savings as they do currently, (b) no access to cigarettes or nicotine products other than those offered at these prices, (c) that they would smoke the cigarettes purchased over the next 24 hours, and (d) are unable to save or stockpile cigarettes.…”

Applying Mixed-Effects Modeling to Behavioral Economic Demand: An Introduction

“…Just as there is variability in how demand is collected, there is variability in how demand is analyzed Reed et al, 2020) and demand is typically analyzed in one of two ways. The first approach is to fit a demand model to the overall group-level consumption.…”

What influences demand for cigars among African American adult cigar smokers? Results from a hypothetical purchase task.

“…A hypothetical cigar purchase task (CPT) was administered to cigar users only. Purchase tasks are used to understand how an individual values a tobacco product, for example, Reed et al (2020) and have been validated across a number of studies for cigarette use (Grace et al, 2015; Mackillop et al, 2016; Wilson et al, 2016).…”