Do People Keep Their Promise to Quit Smoking? Evidence of Irrational Behavior

Smoking has both internalities and externalities that harm both smokers and people around them. Thus, cigarette addiction is worth researching. In this paper I study the behavior of smokers and test whether it is rational or not. I consider respondents of RLMS that claimed to quit smoking if prices double. I find that only 30% of them quit smoking when prices indeed doubled. It is shown that such low percentage is not explained by unexpected shocks, including but not limited to change in income, employment and marital status. Then I use logistic regression model and machine learning methods to investigate the behavior of different sets of smokers that claimed to quit smoking. The analysis suggests that older people are more likely to quit smoking, while people that consume alcohol are less likely. In addition, the number of cigarettes consumed per day and price for a pack of cigarettes seem to influence the probability of quitting smoking.