« Senate Passes GINA | Main | Glanville on Rookies and Veterans: A Workplace Lesson for All? »
April 25, 2008
Do Workplace Smoking Bans Have A Multiplier Effect?
A couple of Harvard Professors have put out a provocative theory about the impact of smoking bans in the Workplace (from Harvard Kennedy School website):
What makes smokers smoke and what makes them stop? Undoubtedly there are many factors – some physical, others psychological, and some perhaps sociological. A new Kennedy School Working Paper, “Social Interactions and Smoking,” specifically examines whether individuals are more likely to smoke when they are surrounded by other smokers.
The paper is co-authored by David Cutler, Otto Eckstein professor of applied economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp professor of economics and director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government.
The researchers find that peers do affect an individual’s decision whether or not to smoke, and that workplace smoking bans can have a multiplier effect.
“Individuals whose spouse faced a workplace smoking ban were less likely to smoke themselves. The estimates suggest a 40 percent reduction in the probability of being an individual smoking if a spouse quits,” the authors write. “The results suggest that policy interventions that impact an individual’s smoking habit will have both direct effects and also indirect effects through on the smoking of peers.”
Reactions?
PS
April 25, 2008 in Worklife Issues | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341bfae553ef00e551fae1af8833
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Do Workplace Smoking Bans Have A Multiplier Effect?:
Comments
These findings are quite revealing about the effects of workplace smoking restrictions on employee smoking habits. What the study suggests is that a norm created by the organization or company is likely to have a desiarable effect (i.e., reduced employee smoking) when it is followed by employees. Nevertheless, not all employees will respond in the same way to the norm/smoking ban. In fact, one should expect considerable variation especially in smokers' compliance and support for any workplace smoking ban; past research, for instance, has shown that smokers with higher nicotine dependence scores are less likely to support smoking restrictions at work. So, while it is important to address the effects of worksite smoking bans, it is even more challenging to identify the correlates of compliance and acceptance of these bans especially by employees who smoke.
A final issue. In the country where i come from (Greece), smoking is still depicted as socially acceptable and normative. Frankly, a handful of research reports have shown that Greeks strongly oppose smoking restrictions at work, in public places, and even in schools or hospitals (with considerably high % of teachers and doctors who smoke respectively). In a cultural context like the one just described the need to study the predictors of smokers' acceptance of, and compliance with smoking bans is even more pronounced. So the story goes for other countries where smoking is still quite normative (e.g., China). In such cultural contexts, it might also be important to study non-smokers' support of smoking restrictions. After all, non-smoker employees who stand up for their right for smoke-free air are likely to send a strong message to smokers about respecting and complying with existing smoking restrictions. But will non-smoker employees be assertive in countries where the rates of smokers are comparably high?
Dr Lambros Lazuras
Research Psychologist
South-East European Research Centre
Posted by: Dr Lambros Lazuras | May 7, 2008 6:27:17 PM
