Determinants of Cigarette Consumption in Turkey: An ARDL Bounds Testing Approach

The purpose of this study is to examine the determinants of cigarette consumption during 1960-2016 in Turkey by employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach. The variables of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, real price of cigarettes, tertiary school enrollment (gross %), urban population (% of total), and tobacco control were adapted as the independent variables. The estimation results reveal that real GDP per capita, urbanization, and tobacco controls positively affect the cigarette consumption while the cigarette prices and level of education negatively affect smoking. Urbanization is the most impactful variable on cigarette consumption, followed respectively by tertiary school enrollment, real GDP per capita, real price of cigarettes, and tobacco control. The estimation results also suggest that controlling the cigarette prices and educating people about the hazardous effects of smoking are important policies for reducing cigarette consumption. The tobacco control policies have not yet had a reducing effecton the cigarette consumption.