Social Reactions and Reasoned Pathways of High School Students and School Dropouts’ Inclination Toward Smoking Behavior: Proto-Type/Willingness Modelling Via Generalized Structural Equation

Background: to investigate the determinants of smoking behavior among iranian adolescents applying the prototype/willingness (p/w) model. methods: in this cross-sectional study, a self-administered p/w model-based questionnaire was completed between 760 randomly selected adolescents (high school students and dropouts) in hamadan, iran, in 2015. gen-eralized structural equation modeling (gsem) was applied to analyze data. results: significant associations were found between subjective norms and positive attitudes toward smoking (p<0.001). the behavioral intention was also significantly related to the willingness and subjective norms (p<0.001). prototype or risk image was not significantly related to the willingness among the dropout adoles-cents. conclusion: when social reaction and reasoned processes are modeled together, both may predict the smoking behavior. the high-risk perception and the high-risk image toward smoking behavior among the adolescents may originate from socio-cultural factors underlying the behavior. further research is recommended to investi-gate the socio-cultural biases of the issue.