Smokers’ Attitude and Intention to Quit after Seeing a Movie with Smoking

Aims: To assess the association between seeing smoking in a movie and adolescent and adult smokers’ attitude towards smoking and intention to quit. Methods: A natural experiment was conducted in a multiplex cinema. We conducted exit interviews with 4,073 movie patrons, of whom 645 (16 %) were smokers. Eleven per cent (n = 69) of the smokers were aged 14 to 17 years old. Subjects had exited 26 movies, of which 12 (46 %) contained smoking. We used multilevel mixed-effects linear regression to assess the effects of (a) exposure to movie smoking (yes vs. no), and (b) age (adolescent vs. adult smokers) on general attitude towards smoking and intention to quit smoking within the next 6 months (both scales ranged 0 – 10). Results: Smokers who saw a movie with smoking had more favourable attitudes towards smoking than those seeing a movie without smoking (p = 0.004). A significant interaction between age group and movie smoking indicated that this difference was more pronounced in adolescent smokers (p = 0.035). No significant differences were found for intentions to quit smoking. Conclusions: Study results suggest that smoking in the movies may influence young smokers to have a more favorable attitude towards smoking.