Objective To examine the prevalence and influencing factors of smoking in urban and rural residents in Shaoxing City for providing evidences to effective tobacco control.

Methods With stratified multistage random sampling， we conducted a face-to-face survey among 4 063 residents aged 15‒69 years in the city. A face-to-face questionnaire survey was used to collect information on smoking among urban and rural residents.

Results Among the 4 063 valid respondents， the rate of current smoking was 22.69%， the current smoking rate of rural residents was 24.85% and the rate of urban residents was 20.48%. The results of unconditional multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the following were the protective factors of smoking among urban and rural residents： having health literacy， suffering the chronic disease， being female， with poor self-evaluated health status， being a personnel of organizations/institutions， students， farmers， workers and other staffs of enterprises （P<0.05）.

Conclusion Health literacy， gender， occupation， age， self-evaluation of health status and chronic diseases are the main influencing factors of current smoking behavior among urban and rural residents. Improving residents’ health literacy through health education can effectively affect residents’ smoking behavior.