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  • The impact of flavour, device type and warning messages on youth preferences for electronic nicotine delivery systems: evidence from an online discrete choice experiment

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Research paper
The impact of flavour, device type and warning messages on youth preferences for electronic nicotine delivery systems: evidence from an online discrete choice experiment
  1. Ce Shang1,
  2. Jidong Huang2,
  3. Frank J Chaloupka1,3,
  4. Sherry L Emery4
  1. 1 Health Policy Center, Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  2. 2 School of Public Health, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
  3. 3 Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  4. 4 Health Media Collaboratory, NORC at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Ce Shang, Health Policy Center, Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60608, USA; cshang{at}uic.edu

Abstract

Objective To examine the impact of flavour, device type and health warning messages on youth preference for electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), and to provide evidence and data to inform the Food and Drug Administration’s potential regulatory actions on ENDS.

Design An online discrete choice experiment was conducted in September 2015. Each participant was given nine choice sets and asked to choose one out of two alternative ENDS products, with varying characteristics in three attributes (flavour, device type and warning message). The impact of the attributes on the probability of choosing ENDS was analysed using conditional and nested logit regressions, controlling for individual sociodemographic characteristics and current smoking status.

Setting and participants A general population sample of 515 participants (50 ever-users and 465 never-users of ENDS) aged 14–17 years were recruited to complete the experiment using an online panel.

Results Fruit/sweets/beverage flavours significantly increase the probability of choosing ENDS among youth (p<0.01 for never-users and <0.1 for ever-users) and flavour has the most pronounced impact among three attributes. Among never-users, menthol flavour also increases (p<0.05) the probability of choosing ENDS compared with tobacco flavour. Vaping devices that are modifiable, compared with cigarette-like e-cigarettes, increase (p<0.05) the probability of choosing ENDS among adolescent never-users. Warning messages reduce (p<0.01) the probability of choosing ENDS among never-users.

Conclusions and relevance Restricting fruit/sweets/beverage flavours in ENDS, regulating modifiable vaping devices and adopting strong health warning messages may reduce the uptake of ENDS among youth.

  • electronic nicotine delivery devices
  • public policy
  • priority/special populations
  • packaging and labelling
  • prevention

https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053754

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors CS: conducted data analysis and drafted the paper; had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. SLE, JH and FJC: contributed to data interpretation and revised the draft. All authors: designed the experiment, reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.

    • Funding This study was funded by the NCI U01CA154254 and 1U01CA154248-04.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Guardian consent obtained.

    • Ethics approval The experiment and survey were conducted with ethics clearance from the institutional review boards/ethics committee at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.