Description
This study focused on private automobiles, a particularly challenging environment for tobacco control policies, and explored the role of advertising cars as smoke-free on their resale value in major metropolitan used car markets with differing tobacco norms. Public information on used cars in 9 markets with varying tobacco norms were utilized. Matched random samples of 200 AutoTrader car advertisements (ATA) were drawn from each market. Measures were Kelley Blue Book valuation (KBB), ATA codings, and regional tobacco norms (RTN). ATA were coded in terms of asking price, age, mileage, make, garaged, the presence of non-smoking language (NSL), warranty, new tires, two tire sets, upgraded stereo system, and premium packages. Indicators of RTNs were tobacco taxation rate, smoking prevalence, extent of public smoking bans, and the existence of automotive smoking bans from the market in which the advertisement was listed. Multiple linear regression analyses for clustered data with bootstrap replications were conducted to investigate the association between Asking Price, NSL and RTNs after controlling for covariates. Analyses of the covariate model indicated that seven predictors accounted for a significant proportion of variance in Asking Price. After controlling for these covariates, the main effect of NSL was not statistically significant. Testing for interaction effects of NSL and each RTN revealed a significant interaction between NSL and carsmoking ban. In regions without car-smoking bans, ATAs with NSL had significantly higher asking prices than ATAs without NSL. On average in these regions, ATAs with NSL had asking prices $771 higher than ATAs without NSL. Linear regression assumptions were met. Study results provide insights into the role of advertising cars as smoke-free on their resale value in major metropolitan used car markets with differing RTNs. Sellers valued smoke-free cars higher in regions without car-smoking bans. This could be used as an argument for strengthening nonsmoking policies in these weak-policy regions. This finding can also help leverage the used car market to adopt car-smoking bans. Differences in asking prices could be further strengthened by explicitly valuing smoke-free and depreciating smoker-cars in formal valuation models, such as KBB.
