New research suggests that cigarettes prices and images have a great impact on its consumers, especially women in terms of continuing to smoke or quitting.

Researchers from the University of Zaragoza found that less educated women are more responsive to pictorial labels on cigarette packets. They also found that prices and labels on could be good tools for reducing smoking rates among women.

In Spain, smoking levels are declining among men, but this trait does not extend to women. In the face of this phenomenon, experts claim that policy measures are needed to tackle such gender disparity, in order to protect women from the habit of smoking and the consequences of tobacco on health.

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed nearly 49,000 responses from women in Spanish National Health surveys in 2001, 2003, 2006 and 2011 to analyze how policy actions affect tobacco consumption decisions among Spanish women. THey focused on four different generations of women: those born before 1950; those born between 1951 and 1964; those born between 1965 and 1983; and those born between 1985 and 1999.

Based on their findings, they found that women who were highly educated were more responsive to prices, while less educated were most vulnerable to pictorial labels.

"Highly educated women are more sensitive to prices and less educated women to pictorial labels," the researchers pointed out.

Based on this observation they concluded that both policies that effectively use both prices and pictorial labels could reduce tobacco consumption.

The researchers believes it is necessary " to come up with the strategies most suited to [smoking habits and genders] and include them in national policy."

The findings are detailed in the journal Addictive Behaviors.