title: Social smokers' management of conflicted identities.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Although social smoking has increased among young adults, it remains a poorly understood behaviour. The authors explored how young adult social smokers viewed and defined smoking and the strategies they used to reconcile their conflicting smoker and non-smoker identities. The authors also examined alcohol's role in facilitating social smoking and investigated measures that would decouple drinking and smoking.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors conducted 13 in-depth interviews with young adult social smokers aged between 19 and 25 years and used thematic analysis to interpret the transcripts.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The authors identified four key themes: the demarcation strategies social smokers used to avoid classifying themselves as smokers, social smoking as a tactic that ameliorates the risk of alienation, alcohol as a catalyst of social smoking and the difficulty participants experienced in reconciling their identity as non-smokers who smoke.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although social smokers regret smoking, their retrospective remorse was insufficient to promote behaviour change, and environmental modifications appear more likely to promote smoke-free behaviours among social smokers. Participants strongly supported extending the smoke-free areas outside bars, a measure that would help decouple their alcohol-fuelled behaviours from the identity to which they aspire.
authors.affiliation: Department of Marketing, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. janet.hoek@otago.ac.nz
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hoek
authors.forename: Ninya
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Maubach
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Stevenson
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gendall
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Edwards
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking; D003073:Cognitive Dissonance; D004644:Emotions; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012649:Self Concept; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000523:psychology; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D012933:Social Identification; D055815:Young Adult