Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand.
Drug Alcohol Rev. 2023 Feb;42(2):268-276. doi: 10.1111/dar.13542. Epub 2022 Sep 5.
Social interactions help smoking and vaping practices evolve, and are essential when constructing social identities. Among people who smoke, vaping offers an alternative practice to 'smoking' and 'non-smoking', and using e-cigarettes blurs the boundaries between 'smoker' and 'non-smoker' social identities. In this study, we explored the development of vaping and smoking social identities over time among young adults who smoked and used e-cigarettes.
Over 18-24 weeks during 2018-2019, we conducted five interviews with each of 11 New Zealand young adults aged 19-29 years who tried vaping to stop smoking. We analysed participants' interview transcripts for social interactions involving smoking or vaping and used social identity theory to explore their construction of vaping social identities.
Participants entered the study with smoke-free goals, and constructed social identities explicitly in relation to a smoke-free transition. Two key identity processes, 'adopting legitimacy' and 'transferring considerateness', informed participants' social identity construction as they attempted to reconcile their e-cigarette use with their pre-study characterisations of vaping as 'illegitimate' and 'obnoxious'. Our findings suggest that adopting a 'legitimate' vaper identity focussed on smoking cessation, and being perceived and accepted by others as a 'legitimate vaper', were essential in participants' identification as 'vapers'. Identifying as a 'legitimate' vaper was a pre-requisite to transferring a 'considerate' identity from smoking to vaping.
Participants' construction of vaping social identities suggests that negotiating and reconciling valued aspects of a smoking social identity with nascent vaping practices may be important during smoking-to-vaping transition attempts.
社会互动有助于吸烟和蒸气行为的演变，对于构建社会身份至关重要。在吸烟人群中，蒸气行为为“吸烟”和“不吸烟”提供了一种替代行为，而使用电子烟则模糊了“吸烟者”和“非吸烟者”社会身份之间的界限。在这项研究中，我们探讨了在尝试戒烟的年轻成年人中，蒸气行为和吸烟社会身份随时间的发展。
在 2018 年至 2019 年期间的 18-24 周内，我们对 11 名 19-29 岁的新西兰年轻人进行了五次访谈，这些人试图通过蒸气行为来戒烟。我们分析了参与者访谈记录中的吸烟或蒸气行为相关的社会互动，并使用社会认同理论来探讨他们蒸气社会身份的构建。
参与者进入研究时都有戒烟的目标，并明确构建了与无烟过渡有关的社会身份。两个关键的身份过程，“采用合法性”和“转移体贴性”，为参与者的社会身份构建提供了信息，他们试图调和他们的电子烟使用与他们在研究前对蒸气行为的描述“不合法”和“讨厌”。我们的研究结果表明，采用“合法”的蒸气者身份专注于戒烟，并且被他人视为“合法”的蒸气者，这对于参与者将自己识别为“蒸气者”是至关重要的。将“体贴”的身份从吸烟转移到蒸气行为上，是识别为“合法”蒸气者的前提。
参与者构建蒸气社会身份的方式表明，在尝试从吸烟转向蒸气行为的过程中，协调和调和吸烟社会身份的有价值方面与新兴的蒸气行为可能很重要。
