On the demand for smoking quitlines

Using recent cross-state U.S. data, this paper estimates the demand for calls to smoking quitlines. Besides formal insights into the determinants of quitline demand, another key contribution is to provide unique insights on the role of related internet resources, using two novel measures. Results show that higher cigarette prices, lower income, and greater government resources increase the demand for quitline calls, with the internet measures having positive but statistically insignificant effects. In terms of magnitude, the elasticity of quitline calls with respect to cigarette prices was about four times greater than that with respect to public funds for quitlines. Policy implications are discussed. Copyright © Springer Science+Business Media New York (outside the USA) 2015