Rational-Choice-Explanations on Smoking Behaviour and Empirical Relevance

What contribution is offered by theories of rational choice to explain smoking behavior? In order to answer this question, two approaches of the Rational-Choice-Paradigm are presented: Theories of Habit & Addiction & the Human Capital Approach. The hypotheses derived from these theories are...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Soziale Welt 2008-01, Vol.59 (3), p.247-268
Main Authors: Gross, Christiane, Gross, Jochen
Format: Article
Language:ger
Subjects:
Behavior
Rational Choice
Smoking
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:What contribution is offered by theories of rational choice to explain smoking behavior? In order to answer this question, two approaches of the Rational-Choice-Paradigm are presented: Theories of Habit & Addiction & the Human Capital Approach. The hypotheses derived from these theories are tested with four datasets (Eurobarometer 1995. Bundesgesundheits-Survey 1998, telefonischer Gesundheitssurvey 2003 & ALLBUS 2004). The Hurdle Regressions used not only allow the qualitative discrimination between smokers & non-smokers, but also treat the number of cigarettes consumed as a count variable. As a result. mainly stable effects of age, sex, & education upon the smoking-status (smoker versus non-smoker) & the mean number of cigarettes consumed by smokers are found. Indeed, unemployed persons are more likely to be smokers, but they do not smoke more cigarettes per day. The effects of marital status, income, & size of domicile vary strongly depending on the dataset used, which might explain different findings in previous publications. Although addictive behavior intuitionally appears to be an anomaly of the Rational-Choice-Paradigm, this analysis shows that RC-approaches provide feasible hypotheses for the explanation of smoking behavior. Adapted from the source document.
ISSN:0038-6073