Geographical location, cigarette risk perceptions, and current smoking among older US adults

Cigarette smoking and smoking-related lung disease are more common in rural (vs urban) areas of the United States (US). This study examined relationships between geographical location, cigarette risk perceptions, and current smoking among older adults who are at greatest risk of developing smoking-related lung disease.

The study was a secondary data analysis of 12126 respondents aged ≥40 years from Wave 5 of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study. Weighted descriptive statistics and Poisson regressions assessed current smoking (vs never or former) as a function of geographical location in a stepwise fashion, first unadjusted, then adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, and finally for both sociodemographic characteristics and cigarette risk perceptions (4-item scale), in three separate models. Sensitivity analyses examined whether individual risk perceptions items had a greater impact on the association between geographical location and current smoking.

Current smoking was more common among rural (20.6%) than urban (17.6%) residents. The risk ratio (RR) for rural (vs urban) residence on current smoking decreased from 1.17 (95% CI: 1.03-1.32) to 1.14 (95% CI: 1.01-1.29) to 1.08 (95% CI: 0.96-1.21) across the stepwise models. Lower cigarette risk perceptions confounded the rural-current smoking association and was an independent risk factor for smoking (adjusted RR, ARR=2.15; 95% CI: 1.94-2.18). In sensitivity analyses, believing that cigarettes are very or extremely (vs somewhat, slightly, or not at all) harmful to health and agreeing (vs not agreeing) that secondhand smoke causes lung disease in people who do not smoke, confounded the rural-current smoking association whereas beliefs about smoking causing lung cancer or lung disease in people who smoke did not.

Lower cigarette risk perceptions among rural residents confounded the positive association between rural residence and current smoking. Results from sensitivity analyses highlight potential targets for communication campaigns aimed at promoting more accurate perceptions of the harmful health consequences of cigarette smoking.