PRC - Research - Roland S. Moore, Ph.D. - "California AB13 Compliance and Ethnicity in Urban Bars"

This proposed study is designed to gain a qualitative understanding of how and why urban stand-alone bars serving patrons from different ethnic groups in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties either comply or fail to comply with California Assembly Bill 13 (AB13), a workplace smoking ban that in 1998 was applied to bars statewide. This study is a logical extension of currently-funded TRDRP research which found in a random sample of 120 San Francisco bars that in contrast with most other kinds of stand-alone bars, nearly all bars serving primarily Irish or Asian clienteles were not complying with AB13, while those serving Latinos were highly compliant. Because hypothesized language barriers to understanding the smoke-free bar law by bar staff or patrons do not in fact account for the observed patterns of bar smoking (which would have predicted compliant Irish bars and noncompliant Latino bars), the answers must be sought elsewhere, including culturally specific social dynamics, smoking patterns in the migrants' countries of origin, and localized enforcement procedures. Using semi-structured interviews as well as both highly structured and qualitative observations, this three-year ethnographic study has the following specific aims:

To establish distinguishing characteristics of noncompliant vs. compliant bars, and compare these for bars serving Latino, Irish and Asian patrons.

Based upon the findings from the San Francisco sample, surveys of different kinds of bars serving Irish, Korean, Chinese, and other Asians and Asian-American patrons in the two urban study sites are predicted to consist of over 70% that are not in compliance, whereas fewer than 10% of bars serving Latino patrons are predicted to be noncompliant. Rigorously recorded observational data during multiple visits to 190 bars serving differentiated subpopulations of Asian, Latino, and Irish patrons will permit comparisons both to the previous data from sample bars in San Francisco and between Latino, Asian and Irish bars in general along a number of dimensions, such as environment, location, size and the character of interactions between staff and patrons.
To explicate the rationales for either compliance with or defiance of the ban on smoking in bars by interviewing 90 people in key roles including managers, bartenders, and patrons from Latino, Asian and Irish bars.

Face-to-face semi-structured interviews with people in key roles and with detailed knowledge about the bars will yield insights into the variety of rationales and systems supporting either compliance with the law or continued smoking in some bars. This study can identify specific ways to motivate active support of the policy and its enforcement, particularly in underserved ethnic minority communities, by explicitly addressing the rationales identified in this research. For example, rationales for complying with the law in some bars serving Latino patrons may provide useful mechanisms for leveraging compliance in bars serving Irish or Asian patrons.
To explore differences in enforcement and responses to enforcement in the study cities and study populations.

Finally, through semi-structured interviews with 18 Los Angeles and San Francisco County health department personnel, legal staff and public safety officers who specialize in bar enforcement, the proposed research will assess the nature and relative success of AB13 enforcement strategies and activities in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Moreover, the enforcement component of the proposed study will focus on enforcement efforts in different Latino, Irish and Asian community bars in the two counties and ethnically-specific responses to enforcement efforts.

Understanding the culturally-based attitudes and practices shaping smoking in public places will inform the production of more successful prevention programs. In view of the tremendous diversity of recent migrants as well as long-established families from Asia, Ireland, and Latin America within the large cities of California, the proposed study promises to detail a variety of processes that hinder compliance with the ban on smoking.