Khwaja Ahmed, Silverman Dan, Sloan Frank, Wang Yang
Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, United States.
J Health Econ. 2009 Mar;28(2):385-97. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2008.12.004. Epub 2008 Dec 25.
While there are many reasons to continue to smoke in spite of its consequences for health, the concern that many smoke because they misperceive the risks of smoking remains a focus of public discussion and motivates tobacco control policies and litigation. In this paper we investigate the relative accuracy of mature smokers' risk perceptions about future survival, and a range of morbidities and disabilities. Using data from the survey on smoking (SOS) conducted for this research, we compare subjective beliefs elicited from the SOS with corresponding individual-specific objective probabilities estimated from the health and retirement study. Overall, consumers in the age group studied, 50-70, are not overly optimistic in their perceptions of health risk. If anything, smokers tend to be relatively pessimistic about these risks. The finding that smokers are either well informed or pessimistic regarding a broad range of health risks suggests that these beliefs are not pivotal in the decision to continue smoking. Although statements by the tobacco companies may have been misleading and thus encouraged some to start smoking, we find no evidence that systematic misinformation about the health consequences of smoking inhibits quitting.
尽管吸烟对健康有诸多危害，但仍有许多人继续吸烟。公众讨论的一个焦点是，许多人吸烟是因为他们错误地认识了吸烟的风险，这也推动了烟草控制政策和诉讼的发展。在本文中，我们研究了成年吸烟者对未来生存、一系列发病率和残疾风险认知的相对准确性。利用本次研究的吸烟情况调查（SOS）数据，我们将SOS中得出的主观信念与从健康与退休研究中估计的相应个体特定客观概率进行了比较。总体而言，所研究的50至70岁年龄组的消费者对健康风险的认知并不过于乐观。如果说有什么不同的话，吸烟者往往对这些风险相对悲观。吸烟者对广泛的健康风险要么了解充分，要么持悲观态度，这一发现表明这些信念在继续吸烟的决定中并非关键因素。尽管烟草公司的声明可能具有误导性，从而鼓励了一些人开始吸烟，但我们没有发现证据表明关于吸烟健康后果的系统性错误信息会阻碍戒烟。
