Neighborhood Vigilance in Terms of Abstinence Expectancies for Smoking and Severity of Problems When Quitting

Abstract

Background: Although social determinants of health (SDoH) have increasingly been understood as clinically important factors in the onset, maintenance, and relapse of substance use behavior, little research has evaluated neighborhood vigilance in terms of smoking. Objectives: The present investigation sought to evaluate the role of neighborhood vigilance in terms of smoking abstinence expectancies (i.e., perceived consequences of refraining from smoking, including negative mood, somatic symptoms, harmful consequences, and positive consequences) and severity of problems when trying to quit among adults who smoke. Results: Participants included 93 treatment-seeking people who smoke (45.2 years of age and 29% identified as female). Results: indicated that greater levels of neighborhood vigilance were associated with negative mood and harmful consequences abstinence expectancies. No effect was evident for somatic symptom abstinence expectancies after Bonferroni correction. Conclusions: As expected, neighborhood vigilance was not predictive of positive abstinence expectancies, offering explanatory specificity. Neighborhood vigilance was also associated with more severe problems when trying to quit smoking. The current findings suggest neighborhood vigilance represents an important contextual factor involved in certain negative beliefs about abstinence and challenges in quitting.

Keywords:

• Smoking
• social determinants of health
• neighborhood vigilance
• smoking abstinence expectancies
• cessation

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Data will be made available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to the University of Houston (U54MD015946). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.