Do Pain-Related Anxiety and Difficulties With Emotion Regulation Impact Abstinence Expectancies or Motivation to Quit E-Cigarette Use?

• Published in: Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs Vol. 82; no. 3; p. 414
• Main Authors: Gold, Alexandra K, Otto, Michael W, Hoyt, Danielle L, Garey, Lorra, Smit, Tanya, Zvolensky, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.05.2021
• Subjects: Adult; Anxiety; Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems; Emotional Regulation; Female; Humans; Male; Motivation; Pain; Smoking Cessation; Vaping
• ISSN: 1938-4114
• DOI: 10.15288/jsad.2021.82.414

Pain-related anxiety is a psychologically based construct that is associated with tobacco dependence and may have important relevance to e-cigarette use. Difficulties with emotion regulation, a relevant construct in motives for cigarette smoking, may interact with pain-related anxiety to yield worsened clinical outcomes among e-cigarette users. We evaluated whether pain-related anxiety and difficulties with emotion regulation independently and in interaction predict e-cigarette users' expectancies surrounding abstinence and their motivation to stop using e-cigarettes. Daily e-cigarette users (n = 290, mean age= 35.5, SD = 10.9, 56.6% male) completed an online survey about e-cigarette use. We conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses to evaluate the main and interactive influence of pain-related anxiety and difficulties with emotion regulation on our outcomes. Increased pain-related anxiety independently predicted negative abstinence expectancies and increased motivation to quit e-cigarette use (ps < .001). Increased difficulties with emotion regulation predicted only negative abstinence expectancies (ps < .01) when pain-related anxiety was included in the model. The interaction between pain-related anxiety and difficulties with emotion regulation was not significant. As hypothesized, increased pain-related anxiety was associated with both negative expectancies of abstinence and increased motivation to quit e-cigarette use, but contrary to our hypothesis, difficulties with emotion regulation were not significantly associated with increased motivation to quit e-cigarette use when evaluated with pain-related anxiety in the model. These findings may elucidate processes influencing abstinence expectancies and motivation to quit in a sample of e-cigarette users, although replication in a larger, more diverse sample is warranted.