IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0161124.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

To Regulate or Not to Regulate? Views on Electronic Cigarette Regulations and Beliefs about the Reasons for and against Regulation

Author

Listed:
  • Ashley Sanders-Jackson
  • Andy S L Tan
  • Cabral A Bigman
  • Susan Mello
  • Jeff Niederdeppe

Abstract

Background: Policies designed to restrict marketing, access to, and public use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are increasingly under debate in various jurisdictions in the US. Little is known about public perceptions of these policies and factors that predict their support or opposition. Methods: Using a sample of US adults from Amazon Mechanical Turk in May 2015, this paper identifies beliefs about the benefits and costs of regulating e-cigarettes and identifies which of these beliefs predict support for e-cigarette restricting policies. Results: A higher proportion of respondents agreed with 8 different reasons to regulate e-cigarettes (48.5% to 83.3% agreement) versus 7 reasons not to regulate e-cigarettes (11.5% to 18.9%). The majority of participants agreed with 7 out of 8 reasons for regulation. When all reasons to regulate or not were included in a final multivariable model, beliefs about protecting people from secondhand vapor and protecting youth from trying e-cigarettes significantly predicted stronger support for e-cigarette restricting policies, whereas concern about government intrusion into individual choices was associated with reduced support. Discussion: This research identifies key beliefs that may underlie public support or opposition to policies designed to regulate the marketing and use of e-cigarettes. Advocates on both sides of the issue may find this research valuable in developing strategic campaigns related to the issue. Implications: Specific beliefs of potential benefits and costs of e-cigarette regulation (protecting youth, preventing exposure to secondhand vapor, and government intrusion into individual choices) may be effectively deployed by policy makers or health advocates in communicating with the public.

Suggested Citation

  • Ashley Sanders-Jackson & Andy S L Tan & Cabral A Bigman & Susan Mello & Jeff Niederdeppe, 2016. "To Regulate or Not to Regulate? Views on Electronic Cigarette Regulations and Beliefs about the Reasons for and against Regulation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(8), pages 1-10, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0161124
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161124
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0161124
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0161124&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0161124?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. Al-Delaimy, W.K. & Myers, M.G. & Leas, E.C. & Strong, D.R. & Hofstetter, C.R., 2015. "E-cigarette use in the past and quitting behavior in the future: A population-based study," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(6), pages 1213-1219.
    2. Kevin E. Levay & Jeremy Freese & James N. Druckman, 2016. "The Demographic and Political Composition of Mechanical Turk Samples," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(1), pages 21582440166, March.
    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. David T. Levy & Zhe Yuan & Yameng Li & Darren Mays & Luz Maria Sanchez-Romero, 2019. "An Examination of the Variation in Estimates of E-Cigarette Prevalence among U.S. Adults," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-19, August.

    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. Deena A. Isom & Hunter M. Boehme & Toniqua C. Mikell & Stephen Chicoine & Marion Renner, 2021. "Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right," Societies, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-20, July.
    2. John Hulland & Jeff Miller, 2018. "“Keep on Turkin’”?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 46(5), pages 789-794, September.
    3. Samir S Soneji & Hai-Yen Sung & Brian A Primack & John P Pierce & James D Sargent, 2018. "Quantifying population-level health benefits and harms of e-cigarette use in the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-19, March.
    4. Valentina A. Bali & Lindon J. Robison & Richard Winder, 2020. "What Motivates People to Vote? The Role of Selfishness, Duty, and Social Motives When Voting," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.
    5. Kutaula, Smirti & Gillani, Alvina & Leonidou, Leonidas C. & Christodoulides, Paul, 2022. "Integrating fair trade with circular economy: Personality traits, consumer engagement, and ethically-minded behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 1087-1102.
    6. Alexsandros Cavgias & Raphael Corbi, Luis Meloni, Lucas M. Novaes, 2019. "EDITED DEMOCRACY: Media Manipulation and the News Coverage of Presidential Debates," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2019_17, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    7. Eugene Y. Chan & Jack Lin, 2022. "Political ideology and psychological reactance: how serious should climate change be?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 1-22, May.
    8. Carola Binder, 2020. "Coronavirus Fears and Macroeconomic Expectations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 721-730, October.
    9. Michael Thaler, 2020. "Good News Is Not a Sufficient Condition for Motivated Reasoning," Papers 2012.01548, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    10. Soojong Kim, 2019. "Directionality of information flow and echoes without chambers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-22, May.
    11. Ann Bostrom & Adam L. Hayes & Katherine M. Crosman, 2019. "Efficacy, Action, and Support for Reducing Climate Change Risks," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(4), pages 805-828, April.
    12. Michael Kumove, 2022. "Does Language Foster Reconciliation? Evidence From the Former Yugoslavia," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 66(4-5), pages 783-808, May.
    13. Vincenz Frey & Arnout van de Rijt, 2021. "Social Influence Undermines the Wisdom of the Crowd in Sequential Decision Making," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4273-4286, July.
    14. Katherine M. Crosman & Ann Bostrom & Adam L. Hayes, 2019. "Efficacy Foundations for Risk Communication: How People Think About Reducing the Risks of Climate Change," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(10), pages 2329-2347, October.
    15. Richard S. Henry & Paul B. Perrin & Erin R. Smith, 2022. "Religiosity, Religious Fundamentalism, Heterosexism, and Support for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights: A Moderated Mediation Approach," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-17, April.
    16. Bell Elizabeth & Fryar Alisa Hicklin & Johnson Tyler, 2021. "Exploring Public Perceptions of Nonprofit Policy Advocacy," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 311-340, July.
    17. Pierce, Jonathan J. & Boudet, Hilary & Zanocco, Chad & Hillyard, Megan, 2018. "Analyzing the factors that influence U.S. public support for exporting natural gas," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 666-674.
    18. Alexander Krauss & Matteo Colombo, 2020. "Explaining public understanding of the concepts of climate change, nutrition, poverty and effective medical drugs: An international experimental survey," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-21, June.
    19. Binder, Carola Conces, 2022. "Time-of-day and day-of-week variations in Amazon Mechanical Turk survey responses," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    20. Peukert, Christian, 2024. "Copyright levies and cloud storage: Ex-ante policy evaluation with a field experiment," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(2).

    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:pone00:0161124. 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.