The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: This study examines the factors that affect the youth's decision to smoke and their tobacco consumption.

Methods: The data collected with the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) are used to analyze the smoking prevalence rate among the youth and the consumption of tobacco among secondary and high school students in Turkey. Two-part model is employed. In the first part, the smoking prevalance rate is estimated with a logit model. The second part examines the demand for tobacco by smoker students.

Results: The results of the logit estimation indicate that several factors affect the smoking prevalence rate of the youth. For example, exposure to smoking at home and at school, accessibility to tobacco products, knowledge about the harmful effects of smoking, pro- and anti-exposure to tobacco from media are found to affect the probability of smoking significantly. However, only anti-exposure and knowledge are found to reduce the tobacco consumption significantly. The smoking prevalence rate shows significant differences among regions, suggesting that some cultural factors affect the youths' smoking behavior. Females are found to more sensitive to price than male students. The findings suggest that if the price of tobacco increases by 10 percent, the youth's tobacco consumption is expected to decline by 7.50 percent on average. Several tobacco control measures are offered based on the results of the analysis.