Trends in motives for trying to stop smoking: a population study in England, 2018–2023
Introduction Since 2020, people in England have lived through a global pandemic and national cost-of-living and healthcare crises, each of which might have affected motivations to stop smoking.Objective To examine changes in the factors motivating people to stop smoking over this period.Methods Data were drawn from a nationally representative monthly cross-sectional survey in England, 2018–2023. Participants were 5777 past-year smokers who made one or more serious attempt to quit in the past year. Participants reported factors contributing to their most recent attempt to quit. We estimated time trends in the proportion of attempts to quit that were motivated by (i) health concerns, (ii) cost, (iii) social factors and (iv) health professional advice, and calculated prevalence ratios (PRs) for the change in prevalence across the whole time series (May 2023 vs March 2018).Results Up to 2020, one in two attempts to quit were motivated by health concerns (mean monthly proportion 51.0%), one