Paper Title
Socio-Economic Impact of ‘Non-Economic’ Factors on Smoking Behaviour in Urban Areas

Abstract
The purpose of this study is to identify the factors other than prices (economic factor) which influence the decision of a current smoker to continue smoking. The government has launched several schemes in order to reduce smoking amongst the public for the very obvious reason that smoking is injurious to health and can cause serious respiratory disorders, including lung cancer. Increase in Prices of the cigarettes through increasing the excise duty on cigarettes is a very common tool to reduce smoking by making it economically inaccessible to the masses. This study is focussed on the urban areas and tries to determine if prices effect the decision to smoke. It further tries to identify the non-economic factors that influence the smoking behaviour of the people. Finally, through this study, the relationship between the effect of price and the non-economic factors are observed to determine if the effect of price is still relevant once the non-economic factors come into play. The analysis is based purely on primary data collected from the current smokers in urban areas in Bengaluru. Although smoking includes different types of tobacco products, this study focuses only on cigarette smoking. The data has been analyzed using MS Excel and SPSS using ‘Dummy Variable Regression Models’. The results show that though the consumption is affected initially because of price, but when the non –economic factors are taken into consideration, the effect of price is not significant anymore. Keywords - Cigarettes, Price, Consumption, Smoking Behaviour