Subjective Beliefs about the Health Risks of Smoking

The perceived health risks of smoking are considered to be critically important to the decision to smoke. Many studies which seek to elicit beliefs about the health risks of smoking do so with unincentivized surveys, and do not attempt to measure the confidence respondents have in their beliefs. Inferences made from unincentivized survey methods can be unreliable. We implement an incentive compatible experiment designed to elicit the beliefs of subjects, as well as the confidence subjects have in their beliefs. We find that subjects typically underestimate the risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and overestimate the risk of other cancers and heart disease due to smoking. We find some evidence of differences in the mean beliefs of smokers and non-smokers, but no evidence of differences in the confidence in beliefs of smokers and non-smokers. ∗Department of Risk Management & Insurance and Center for the Economic Analysis of Risk, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, USA (Harrison); School of Economics, University of Cape Town, South Africa (Hofmeyr, Kincaid, Monroe); School of Sociology, Philosophy, Criminology, Government, and Politics, University College Cork, Ireland; School of Economics, University of Cape Town, South Africa; Center for the Economic Analysis of Risk, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, USA (Ross). Harrison is also affiliated with the School of Economics, University of Cape Town. E-mail contacts: gharrison@gsu.edu, andre.hofmeyr@uct.ac.za, harold.kincaid@uct.ac.za, brian.monroe@uct.ac.za, don.ross931@gmail.com. We are grateful to the National Research Foundation of South Africa for funding. This funder had no involvement in any substantive aspect of the research project. Declaration of Competing Interests. Harrison has served as a testifying expert witness for plaintiffs in litigation against tobacco companies in the United States and Canada for 20 years, and continues to do so. His testimony is primarily on health care costs to governments associated with tobacco-related diseases, but also includes testimony on the perception of smoking risks. He has received compensation for the research and time supporting this testimony.