Discounting and E-cigarette Use: An Investigation in Current, Former, and Never Cigarette Smokers.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Posted by: Natalia Gromov
Stein JS, Heckman BW, Pope DA, Perry ES, Fong GT, Cummings KM, Bickel WKDelay
Discounting and E-cigarette Use: An Investigation in Current, Former, and Never Cigarette Smokers.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2018 Aug 11;191:165-173. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2018.06.034. [Epub ahead of print]
Cigarette smokers show greater delay discounting (devaluation of delayed consequences) than non-smokers, suggesting that rapid devaluation of the future contributes to tobacco use through a mechanism in which tobacco-related health consequences are too delayed to discourage smoking. However, little work has quantified delay discounting in relation to electronic cigarette (EC) use, a tobacco product that many users believe to pose fewer negative health consequences than cigarettes. We assessed discounting of delayed monetary rewards in a web-based sample of 976 participants, stratified by both EC use (current and never) and cigarette use (current, former, and never). Controlling for demographic variance, current EC users generally showed greater discounting than never EC users (p = .019). Current cigarette smokers also showed greater discounting than former and never smokers (p < .001). However, the between-group difference for EC use was much smaller (ηp2 = .006) than for cigarette use (ηp2 = .026). Moreover, differences in discounting in relation to EC use were not statistically apparent in most pairwise comparisons. Most notably, the difference between former smokers who achieved smoking cessation by transitioning to ECs (i.e., exclusive EC users) and those who have never used ECs or cigarettes was nonsignificant and small (ηp2 = .010). The smaller effect size for the association between delay discounting and current EC use, relative to current cigarette use, suggests that public perception of ECs as a safer alternative to cigarettes attenuates the role of delay discounting in decisions to use ECs.
|
|
Email to a Friend