IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0016754.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effectiveness of State and Federal Government Agreements with Major Credit Card and Shipping Companies to Block Illegal Internet Cigarette Sales

Author

Listed:
  • Kurt M Ribisl
  • Rebecca S Williams
  • Ziya Gizlice
  • Amy H Herring

Abstract

Objective: To assess whether these bans increased the rate of Internet Cigarette Vendors (ICVs) ceasing online sales, decreased the proportion of vendors offering banned payment and shipping options, and decreased consumer traffic to the most popular ICVs. Design: Websites in a longitudinal study of ICVs were visited in 2003 (n = 338), 2004 (n = 775), 2005 (n = 664), 2006 (n = 762), and 2007 (n = 497) to assess whether they were in business and monitor their advertised sales practices. The number of unique monthly visitors to the 50 most popular ICVs at baseline was examined for the period one year before and two years after the bans to determine whether the bans altered traffic. Results: Following the bans, the rate of ICVs ceasing online sales year to year increased, but due to an influx of new vendors, there was a net increase in ICVs. The proportion of vendors accepting banned payment options dropped from 99.2% to 37.4% after the bans, and the proportion offering banned shipping options dropped from 32.2% to 5.6%, but there was a corresponding increase in vendors offering non-banned payment options (e.g., personal checks) and shipping options (e.g., US Postal Service). Following the bans, there was a 3.5 fold decline in traffic to the most popular ICV websites. Conclusions: This promising approach to controlling the sale of restricted goods online has implications for regulating other products such as alcohol, firearms, quack cures, and medicines sold without a prescription.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurt M Ribisl & Rebecca S Williams & Ziya Gizlice & Amy H Herring, 2011. "Effectiveness of State and Federal Government Agreements with Major Credit Card and Shipping Companies to Block Illegal Internet Cigarette Sales," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(2), pages 1-6, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0016754
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016754
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016754
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016754&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0016754?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Austan Goolsbee & Michael F. Lovenheim & Joel Slemrod, 2010. "Playing with Fire: Cigarettes, Taxes, and Competition from the Internet," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 131-154, February.
    2. Hyland, A. & Higbee, C. & Li, Q. & Bauer, J.E. & Giovino, G.A. & Alford, T. & Cummings, K.M., 2005. "Access to low-taxed cigarettes deters smoking cessation attempts," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 95(6), pages 994-995.
    3. New York State Department of Health & (Kevin Davis) & (Matthew Farrelly) & (Qiang Li) & (Andrew Hyland), 2006. "Cigarette Purchasing Patterns among New York Smokers: Implications for Health, Price, and Revenue," University of California at San Francisco, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education qt8026w9n0, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, UC San Francisco.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bryden, Anna & Petticrew, Mark & Mays, Nicholas & Eastmure, Elizabeth & Knai, Cecile, 2013. "Voluntary agreements between government and business—A scoping review of the literature with specific reference to the Public Health Responsibility Deal," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 186-197.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matthew C Farrelly & James M Nonnemaker & Kimberly A Watson, 2012. "The Consequences of High Cigarette Excise Taxes for Low-Income Smokers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(9), pages 1-7, September.
    2. Liran Einav & Dan Knoepfle & Jonathan Levin & Neel Sundaresan, 2014. "Sales Taxes and Internet Commerce," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 1-26, January.
    3. Lesley Chiou & Erich Muehlegger, 2014. "Consumer Response to Cigarette Excise Tax Changes," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 67(3), pages 621-650, September.
    4. Hansen, Benjamin & Sabia, Joseph J. & Rees, Daniel I., 2011. "Cigarette Taxes and the Social Market," IZA Discussion Papers 5580, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Philip DeCicca & Donald Kenkel & Feng Liu, 2015. "Reservation Prices: An Economic Analysis of Cigarette Purchases on Indian Reservations," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 68(1), pages 93-118, March.
    6. Harding, Matthew & Lovenheim, Michael, 2017. "The effect of prices on nutrition: Comparing the impact of product- and nutrient-specific taxes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 53-71.
    7. Cohen, Alex & Keiser, David A., 2017. "The effectiveness of incomplete and overlapping pollution regulation: Evidence from bans on phosphate in automatic dishwasher detergent," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 53-74.
    8. Christian Ben Lakhdar & Nicolas Gérard Vaillant & François-Charles Wolff, 2016. "Does smoke cross the border? Cigarette tax avoidance in France," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 17(9), pages 1073-1089, December.
    9. David R. Agrawal & William F. Fox, 2017. "Taxes in an e-commerce generation," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(5), pages 903-926, September.
    10. DeCicca, Philip & Kenkel, Donald & Liu, Feng, 2013. "Excise tax avoidance: The case of state cigarette taxes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1130-1141.
    11. William B. Hankins, 2023. "Partisan Politics and Excise Tax Rates in the United States," Public Finance Review, , vol. 51(6), pages 719-747, November.
    12. James D. Dana Jr. & Eugene Orlov Jr., 2014. "Internet Penetration and Capacity Utilization in the US Airline Industry," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 106-137, November.
    13. Lee, Jungeun Olivia & Hill, Karl G. & Hartigan, Lacey A. & Boden, Joseph M. & Guttmannova, Katarina & Kosterman, Rick & Bailey, Jennifer A. & Catalano, Richard F., 2015. "Unemployment and substance use problems among young adults: Does childhood low socioeconomic status exacerbate the effect?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 36-44.
    14. Hansen, Benjamin & Sabia, Joseph J. & McNichols, Drew & Bryan, Calvin, 2023. "Do tobacco 21 laws work?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    15. Edward L. Glaeser, 2012. "Urban Public Finance," NBER Working Papers 18244, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Ishuan Li & Robert Simonson & Guncha Babajanova & Matthew Tuomala, 2016. "Smartphone Diffusion and Consumer Price Comparison Shopping Behavior: Implications for the Marketplace Fairness Act," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(3), pages 1337-1353.
    17. Bastian Stockinger, 2019. "Broadband internet availability and establishments’ employment growth in Germany: evidence from instrumental variables estimations," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 53(1), pages 1-23, December.
    18. Jean‐François Houde & Peter Newberry & Katja Seim, 2023. "Nexus Tax Laws and Economies of Density in E‐Commerce: A Study of Amazon's Fulfillment Center Network," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(1), pages 147-190, January.
    19. Andrea S. Licht & Andrew J. Hyland & Richard J. O’Connor & Frank J. Chaloupka & Ron Borland & Geoffrey T. Fong & Nigar Nargis & K. Michael Cummings, 2011. "How Do Price Minimizing Behaviors Impact Smoking Cessation? Findings from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-21, May.
    20. Agrawal, David R. & Shybalkina, Iuliia, 2023. "Online shopping can redistribute local tax revenue from urban to rural America," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0016754. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.