Economist claims Cornell smoking-ban study is flawed

Nation's Restaurant News, Nov 11, 1996 by Milford Prewitt

Released in a press conference a year ago, the Cornell study was based on interviews with 389 restaurant patrons as they left 19 diverse but randomly selected Manhattan restaurants during a single week in August 1995. Of the 389 respondents, 134, or 34.4 percent, turned out to be smokers, and 255, or 65.6 percent, were nonsmokers.

Because there were more nonsmokers than smokers and since the nonsmokers suggested they were dining out more and spending more after the law passed, the authors of the Cornell study summed up their work by stating: "Ultimately, smoke-free legislation is likely to have a positive impact on restaurant industry revenues.

"Our advice to other cities and municipalities is to consider seriously similar legislation. The restaurant industry collectively may experience higher revenues through smoke-free legislation."

Humber said the statement exceeded the bounds of research. He said it was that conclusion along with the broader finding that sales increased, that prompted the firing of Evans to review the study.

Fred Sampson, president of the New York City chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association, said the Cornell examination made little sense. "Any law that immediately discriminates against 26 percent of our customer base is bound to have a negative impact on our business," Sampson said. "You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to figure that one out. I don't see how they [the Cornell researchers] drew the conclusion they did."

However, Enz said people are reading too much into her conclusion, and she insisted that the report was not trying to make a political statement. She also said her recommendation that other cities consider laws similar to New York City's was an "inference," and not a conclusion.

"I care about this industry, and my study clearly said that if you want to figure out how to deal with this issue, since there are more of them," she said.

Evans stressed that the fact the Cornell study did not attempt to measure pre-ban and post-ban traffic made the study invalid. Nevertheless Enz emphasized that her study was a consumer behavior examination, not an economic impact study, and did not need to create before and-after equations.

"At the heart. of this issue is a difference between the study we conducted and the one that they think we should have conducted," she said. "What they have done is critiqued our paper for having not found what we did not study in the first place, which is really amazing to me.

"The fact of the matter is that the NSA themselves have not attempted an economic impact study because they are not prepared to find results that conflict with their agenda. So name calling is more powerful than what we in science can do."

Beyond the before-and-after flap, Evans, Sampson and other critics assailed the Cornell researchers for conducting the study in August, a month when New York restaurateurs traditionally enjoy strong sales from tourists. Enz, however, countered that 93 percent of the respondents were residents of the city.