Scenescape and youth tobacco use in China: a symbolic study of expressive and volatile scenes

Previous research often measured sites and venues as proxies for place, but the place effect on health also comes from the symbolic value emanating from a place—namely the scenescape. This study investigates how scenescapes affected adolescent tobacco use by combining the number of venues and the symbolic meanings of each venue measured via separate surveys. We sampled 2800 adolescents and youths (age 15–25) from 33 schools from 4 major Sinitic cultural regions and tested whether exposure to highly expressive and volatile scenescapes increases the likelihood of tobacco use. We assessed and calculated the scores of expressiveness and volatility of the neighbourhood within the 3 km radius of the respondent's household. Then, we conducted hierarchical logistic regression on tobacco use and the scene scores, adjusted for random effects and covariates. The results indicate that adolescents living in volatile scenes were more likely to smoke combustible cigarettes (3.66, p < 0.05), whereas expressive scenes were negatively associated with smoking (−3.58, p < 0.01). Vaping e-cigarettes showed no significant association with either expressiveness or volatility. These findings highlight the importance of the symbolic scenes in understanding youth substance use.