Scott Weaver
Georgia State University, GA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Cigarette smoking remains the single largest cause of cancer in the United States, and models suggest that substantial benefit over the next two decades would come if adult smokers fully replaced cigarettes with electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS, or e-cigarettes) rather than using both. Whether smokers actually make that switch depends on a tangle of factors: what they believe about the health risks and benefits, how much products cost, where they are allowed to use them, and whether the device actually satisfies a craving.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
Social Science
- Topics
tobacco regulatory science
electronic nicotine delivery systems
e-cigarettes
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Examine how electronic nicotine delivery system characteristics — device type and design, flavors, and ability to relieve cravings — influence smokers' decisions to start, dual-use or fully substitute, using focus groups with 120 adult smokers.
- Track 300 smokers who recently began using e-cigarettes over one year with weekly then quarterly assessments, applying piecewise dynamic latent class analysis to identify trajectories of tobacco use shaped by context, beliefs and emotional responses.
- Use a discrete-choice experiment with these 300 smokers to quantify which product attributes drive risk/benefit perceptions, preferences and intentions, and test whether those preferences predict actual later tobacco use.
- Run a second discrete-choice experiment in a nationally representative sample of 2,400 adult smokers to test how product features, risk perceptions and context such as indoor-smoking bans jointly shape product preference.
- Conduct a randomized clinical trial with 1,800 adult smokers using a hypothetical purchase task that manipulates risk/benefit perceptions, estimating demand for cigarettes, ENDS and heat-not-burn products and their substitutability for one another.
More about the research
This project asks how those factors combine to produce the decisions smokers make — rejecting e-cigarettes, using them alongside cigarettes, switching completely, or quitting nicotine altogether.
Why it matters
Regulators set prices, flavor rules, indoor-air policies and product standards without much evidence on how smokers actually respond. By measuring how these levers interact with beliefs about risk to shift demand among cigarettes, e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn products, this work could inform local, state and federal policy aimed at cutting combustible tobacco use — and with it, tobacco-caused cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Meghan Morean
Yale University, CT·Public Health & Epidemiology
Refine an ENDS nicotine concentration label so its strength categories are anchored to cigarette nicotine content, using expert feedback and focus groups.
Rafael Meza
University of Michigan, MI·Public Health & Epidemiology
Characterize patterns of cigarette, cigar and electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) use across US population groups defined by sex, age and education level.
Elias Klemperer
University of Vermont, VT·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether very low nicotine content cigarettes reduce cigarettes smoked per day and cigarette dependence among adult dual users of cigarettes and e-cigarettes, in a 12-week double-blind randomized trial.
The school
Georgia State University: 9 labs on PI Pages, $241M a year on research, 300 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.