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Smoking Bans, Leisure Time and Subjective Well-being

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Abstract

During 2007 and 2008 smoking bans were gradually implemented in all of Germany’s sixteen federal states to prohibit smoking in bars, restaurants, and dance clubs. Aimed at reducing smoking and improving health, tobacco control policies are often controversially discussed as they entail potential side effects. We exploit regional variation to identify effects of smoking bans on life satisfaction and leisure time satisfaction. Difference-in-differences estimates reveal that predicted smokers who used to visit bars regularly are less satisfied with life and leisure time, following the enforcement of a smoking ban. We show that changes in use of leisure time likely explain these findings. On the contrary, predicted non-smokers who did not visit bars and restaurants frequently benefit from the smoking bans, as their satisfaction with leisure time increases. They show an increase in hours spent on free-time activities and are more likely to go out with smoking bans in effect.

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Notes

  1. However, the health benefits may only hold in the short term, as Shetty et al. (2010) find no association between smoking bans and declines in mortality or hospital admissions. Kvasnicka et al. (2018) on the other hand do find a reduction in hospital admissions due to cardiovascular diseases and asthma when smoking bans are enforced. The authors show that the reduction in hospital admissions lasts for up to a year.

  2. Agee and Crocker (2007) also suggest that increased tobacco smoke exposures of children in their homes may be due to public policies that discourage smoking in public places.

  3. As smoking bans may influence doctor visits, we use number of doctor visits in 2006 for the waves 2006 to 2008.

  4. Note that we do not include time-invariant variables such as gender or migration background as we estimate fixed effects models.

  5. The estimated smoking propensity in 2002 is used for the wave 2003. Respectively, smoking propensity in 2004 (2006) is used for the years 2004 and 2005 (2006–2008). Note that the shares of potential smokers and non-smokers are not exactly 50 percent, as all available observations were used for the smoking propensity estimations and not only the estimation samples of the satisfaction analysis. Table 15 in the Appendix reports the results of the smoking propensity estimations.

  6. In Table 13 in the Appendix we run the same regressions but add control variables step by step to show that the results also hold in a less restrictive model.

  7. The results of the linear probability models presented in Table 14 show that smoking bans increase likely non-smokers’ probability of being satisfied with leisure time by 2.3 percentage points (panel B, line 1). For likely non-smokers who visit bars weekly the probability of being satisfied with life decreases by 2.8 percentage points and of being satisfied with leisure time by 2.4 percentage points (panel B, line 2).

  8. Other time use variables available in the SOEP are hours spent per day on work (all jobs, apprenticeship, commuting), on education or further training, on errands (shopping, trips to government agencies, etc.), and on care and support for persons in need of care. We found no significant pattern in the results for these activities. Results are available upon request.

  9. Results are available upon request.

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  1. University of Trier, Trier, Germany

    Cornelia Chadi

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  1. Cornelia Chadi
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The author is grateful to Uwe Jirjahn, Normann Lorenz, Annika Campaner, Adrian Chadi, various conference participants, the editor of the journal, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on the paper. A version of this paper appeared as a chapter in the author’s Ph.D. thesis at the University of Trier.

Appendix

Appendix

See the Tables 12, 13, 14 and 15.

Table 12 Pre-trend analysis
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Table 13 The effects of smoking bans on satisfaction; adding control variables step by step
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Table 14 Robustness check; Binary dependent variables
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Table 15 Determinants of smoking
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Chadi, C. Smoking Bans, Leisure Time and Subjective Well-being. J Happiness Stud 23, 3765–3797 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00580-9

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