The impact of perceived risk of COVID-19 from smoking on the change in number of cigarettes smoked

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Smoking increases the risk of severe illness and mortality from COVID-19. However, the impact of risk perception on smoking over time is unknown.

Method

Participants (n = 487) who reported having smoked daily or nondaily in February 2020 were recruited through Reddit and completed a cross-sectional survey. Linear regression models examined the impact of perception that smoking increases the risk of COVID-19 on changes in cigarettes per day (CPD).

Results

The greater perceived risk of smoking on COVID-19 predicted greater decreases in CPD from before the pandemic (December 2019 – February 2020) to March – May 2020, but no change was observed from March – May 2020 to June – August 2020. However, greater perceived risk predicted increases in CPD from June – August 2020 to November 2020 – January 2021. Participants with high levels of perceived risk (>75^th percentile) were more likely to reduce their CPD in the beginning of the pandemic compared to those with low perceived risk (≤25^th percentile), but more likely to increase their CPD between June – August 2020 to November 2020 – January 2021, even though perceived risk remained stable over time.

Conclusion

Perceived risk is associated with a reduction in CPD, but participants returned to their pre-COVID smoking behavior within less than a year.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• perceived risk
• risk perception
• cigarette reduction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical standards

The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

Additional information

Funding

This project was partially supported by a research award to Danusha Selva Kumar from Fordham University.