Lose the smoke, keep the sales: Impact of comprehensive smoke-free air policies on municipal bar and restaurant taxable sales in St. Louis County, Missouri

• Main Author: Barbero, Colleen
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: Ann Arbor ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 2015
• Subjects: Public health; Public policy
• ISBN: 1321947666; 9781321947663

Communities in places like St. Louis County, Missouri worry that implementing comprehensive smoke-free air policies will reduce bar and restaurant revenue as smokers take their business to neighboring communities. This study was designed to test for a spillover of bar and restaurant taxable sales between smoke-free municipalities and their neighbors. A series of pooled cross-sectional time series models estimated with Newey-West regression and fixed effects was used to examine taxable sales in the first year after: (1) comprehensive policy implementation in the group of St. Louis County municipalities that implemented policies between January 2009 and December 2011 (n=4), and (2) neighbor comprehensive policy implementation in three neighbor groups of increasing geographic size (n=16, 23, and 35). The interactions of community-level socioeconomic status-related measures (i.e., education, race, and occupation) with policy implementation were also examined. Results showed that in the first year post-policy, lower municipal socioeconomic status did not interact with policy implementation to decrease bar and restaurant taxable sales in municipalities that implemented policies, or to increase bar and restaurant taxable sales in neighbors without policies. This finding was true no matter how socioeconomic status or the neighbor group was defined. Communities who are considering comprehensive smoke-free air policies, even in those in competitive bar and restaurant markets, should not worry about losing smoking patrons to their neighbors and should feel confident in supporting comprehensive policy initiatives.