Abstract
This study adds to the collegiate substance use literature by measuring the magnitude of peer effects upon individual cigarette use. The study employs data from the 2001 Harvard School of Health College Alcohol Survey to construct this peer effect measure and to study the effect of other variables upon a university student’s decision to smoke. The main finding of this paper is that moving a student from a university where no students smoke to an institution where 25 percent of the population smokes increases that student’s probability of smoking by 10.71 percent. The results of this paper suggest the potential for universities to institute student-led, anti-smoking organizations.
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Notes
ImpacTeen 2005. Toll of Tobacco in the United States of America.
The economic work on substance use is quite large. To list all relevant works here is unnecessary. Becker’s work alone in the area would require more bibliographical entrants that are present in this study as it stands.
Kawaguchi (2004).
Manksi (1993); Powell et al. (2005). An example of this masking effect is the following: The price of cigarettes increases by 25 percent in a given state. A prominent member of a peer group quits smoking because of this price increase. The rest of the individual’s peer group also quits smoking, not because of the price increase, but because smoking is no longer as popular due to their friend quitting. One could easily mistake this decrease in smoking behavior to be attributed to the price increases when in fact the peer effect measure caused the majority of this fall in smoking levels.
Powell et al. 2005.
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Acknowledgement
Thanks to Francesco Renna for all his assistance with this study. Thank you also to my readers Steven Myers, Randall King, Doug Brewer, Alexander Butler, Monika Dutka, and Jared Miller for all the additional assistance and input.
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Jeffrey Wilson was the first place winner of the Undergraduate Best Paper Award Competition at the 62nd International Atlantic Economic Conference in Philadelphia, PA, October 5–8, 2006.
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Wilson, J. Peer Effects and Cigarette Use Among College Students. Atl Econ J 35, 233–247 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11293-007-9064-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11293-007-9064-z