Does e-cigarette advertising encourage adult smokers to quit?

Abstract

Only recently introduced into the U.S. market, e-cigarettes have been aggressively promoted, and use is increasing rapidly among both adults and youths. At the heart of the regulatory debate are fundamental questions regarding whether e-cigarettes will draw cigarette smokers away from a dangerous habit or lure new initiates into tobacco use. We provide some of the first causal evidence on whether e-cigarette advertising on television and in magazines (which comprise about 90% of total media spending on e-cigarettes) encourage adult smokers to quit. We find that the answer to this question is a yes for TV advertising but no for magazine advertising. Our results indicate that a policy to ban TV advertising of e-cigarettes would have reduced the number of smokers who quit in the recent past by approximately 3%, resulting in roughly 105,000 fewer quitters in that period. On the other hand, if the FDA were not considering regulations and mandates that would likely eliminate many e-cigarette producers during our sample period, e-cigarette ads might have reached the number of nicotine replacement therapy TV ads during that period. That would have increased the number of smokers who quit by around 10%, resulting in an additional 350,000 quitters.

Information Source and Cigarettes: Experimental Evidence on the Messenger Effect

“…Collectively, our findings do not suggest that advertising by private companies will lead to substantial reductions in tobacco product use among adult tobacco cigarette smokers. 8 We note that, while the studies apply different identification strategies, our findings are in line with Dave, Dench, Grossman, Kenkel, and Saffer (2018) who find no evidence that ecigarette magazine advertising influences quitting behavior among U.S. adult smokers. The authors do provide evidence that exposure to television e-cigarette advertising may prompt some smokers to quit smoking.…”

The Economics of Tobacco Regulation: A Comprehensive Review

“…The identifying variation is thus between consumers who are exposed to different numbers of e-cigarette advertisements because they watched the same television programs but in different quarters or years. Dave et al (2019) find that increases in advertisement exposure lead to a statistically significant but quantitatively small increase in the probability of quitting smoking.…”

“…Studies of tobacco product advertising provide additional but indirect evidence on whether alternative forms of tobacco consumption are substitutes or complements to cigarette smoking Saffer 2013, Dave et al 2019). 41 Dave et al (2019) find evidence that ecigarette advertising increases smoking quit rates. This finding suggests that cigarettes and ecigarettes are substitutes.…”

“…Two recent studies that use different datasets and different identification strategies find evidence that e-cigarette advertisements encourage smokers to substitute towards e-cigarettes Using 2013-15 data from the Simmons National Consumer Survey, Dave et al (2019) estimate that smokers who are exposed to more television advertisements for e-cigarettes are more likely to quit smoking. The identification strategy uses the quasi-random variation in advertising exposure that remains after including fixed effects for calendar time and television time slot, program, and channel.…”

E-cigarettes and adult smoking: Evidence from Minnesota

“…We consider all waves up to 2010-2011 as the pre-treatment periods. Given that the prevalence of e-cig use in 2010 and 2011 remained quite low (less than 1 percent; see Dave et al 2019) and given that it may take some time to change smoking habits, any effect of the e-cig tax in 2010 is unlikely to materialize until after 2010. In addition, the 2010-2011 TUS was conducted in May, 2010, August 2010, and January 2011.…”