Ng’ombe, J.N.; Nedson, N.R.; Tembo, N.F.P. “Look at Me, I Plan to Quit Smoking”: Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis of Adolescent Smokers’ Intention to Quit Smoking. Healthcare2020, 8, 76.
Ng’ombe, J.N.; Nedson, N.R.; Tembo, N.F.P. “Look at Me, I Plan to Quit Smoking”: Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis of Adolescent Smokers’ Intention to Quit Smoking. Healthcare 2020, 8, 76.
Ng’ombe, J.N.; Nedson, N.R.; Tembo, N.F.P. “Look at Me, I Plan to Quit Smoking”: Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis of Adolescent Smokers’ Intention to Quit Smoking. Healthcare2020, 8, 76.
Ng’ombe, J.N.; Nedson, N.R.; Tembo, N.F.P. “Look at Me, I Plan to Quit Smoking”: Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis of Adolescent Smokers’ Intention to Quit Smoking. Healthcare 2020, 8, 76.
Abstract
The tobacco epidemic is one of the leading public health threats the world has ever faced and public health policy that seeks to limit the problem may not only have to target the price of tobacco but also the initiation stage in a smoker’s life – the adolescent stage. This research contributes to the health economics literature by using a Bayesian hierarchical logistic model, estimated using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) methods to empirically identify what drives the intentions to quit smoking among adolescent smokers in Zambia. Results suggest that among the junior secondary school-going adolescent smokers in Zambia, about 63% have plans to quit smoking. We find socio-demographic characteristics and several tobacco-smoking-related factors as the main drivers of adolescent smokers’ plans to quit smoking. Most importantly, we provide insights that could be useful to help adolescent smokers realize their quitting plans.
Keywords
tobacco smoking; intention to quit smoking; Hamiltonian Monte Carlo; Bayesian analysis; Zambia
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Economics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
