TOBACCO SALES/ECONOMIC IMPACT

Economic effect of restaurant smoking restrictions on restaurant business in Massachusetts, 1992 to 1998

W J Bartosch, G C Pope

Center for Health Economics Research, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
William J Bartosch, Center for Health Economics Research, 411 Waverley Oaks Road, Suite 330, Waltham, MA 02452, USA;
bbartosch{at}her-cher.org

Objective: To determine if restaurant business declines or improves after the implementation of restrictive restaurant smoking policies.

Design: Analysis used a pre/post-quasi-experimental design that compared town meals tax receipts before and after the imposition of highly restrictive restaurant smoking policies in adopting versus non-adopting communities. The effect of restaurant smoking policies was estimated using a fixed effects regression model, entering a panel of 84 months of data for the 239 towns in the study. A separate model estimated the effect of restaurant smoking policies on establishments that served alcohol.

Main outcome measure: Change in the trend in meals tax revenue (adjusted for population) following the implementation of highly restrictive restaurant smoking policies.

Results: The local adoption of restrictive restaurant smoking policies did not lead to a measurable deviation from the strong positive trend in revenue between 1992 and 1998 that restaurants in Massachusetts experienced. Controlling for other less restrictive restaurant smoking policies did not change this finding. Similar results were found for only those establishments that served alcoholic beverages.

Conclusions: Highly restrictive restaurant smoking policies do not have a significant effect on a community's level of meal receipts, indicating that claims of community wide restaurant business decline under such policies are unwarranted.

Keywords: policy; restaurant smoking; environmental tobacco smoke; secondhand smoke; Massachusetts

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Rayens, M. K., Hahn, E. J., Langley, R. E., Hedgecock, S., Butler, K. M., Greathouse-Maggio, L. (2007). Public Opinion and Smoke-Free Laws. Policy Politics Nursing Practice 8: 262-270 [Abstract]  
• Pyles, M. K, Mullineaux, D. J, Okoli, C. T C, Hahn, E. J (2007). Economic effect of a smoke-free law in a tobacco-growing community. Tobacco Control 16: 66-68 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Kunzli, N, Mazzoletti, P, Adam, M, Gotschi, T, Mathys, P, Monn, C, Brandli, O (2003). Smoke-free cafe in an unregulated European city: highly welcomed and economically successful. Tobacco Control 12: 282-288 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Scollo, M, Lal, A, Hyland, A, Glantz, S (2003). Review of the quality of studies on the economic effects of smoke-free policies on the hospitality industry. Tobacco Control 12: 13-20 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Koh, H K (2002). Accomplishments of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program. Tobacco Control 11: ii1-3 [Full Text]