Location-Specific Social Norms and Personal Approval of Alcohol Use are Associated with Drinking Behaviors in College Students

Abstract

Background: Prior research on risky alcohol use points to drinking norms as predictors of drinking behavior. Most research to date has only explored global (versus context-specific) drinking norms as they relate to general drinking behavior. To better understand risky drinking behavior in students, how norms may vary across drinking environments should be considered. Objectives: We sought to explore differences in drinking norms (descriptive and injunctive), personal approval, and alcohol use across specific drinking locations and how these location-specific predictors combine to best predict alcohol consumption in home/dorm locations, bars, and parties. Methods: College student drinkers (N = 115, 76% female) participated in an anonymous online cross-sectional survey in 2015–2016 assessing personal and perceived drinking experiences and attitudes across various locations. Results: Alcohol use, descriptive norms of alcohol use, and injunctive norms of alcohol use (but not personal approval) varied across location. In addition, location-specific descriptive norms were associated with alcohol use in each drinking location, whereas location specific personal approval was associated with alcohol use only at home/dorm and bar locations. Furthermore, descriptive norms and personal approval of drinking in a given location predicted alcohol use in that same location, while norms or approval for other locations did not. Conclusion/Importance: Results highlight the importance of specificity of perceived drinking norms and personal approval for predicting location-specific alcohol use. These findings have implications for interventions, which may benefit from discussions of students’ preferred drinking locations and providing location-specific normative feedback.

Keywords:

• Alcohol use
• college students
• location
• perceived norms
• attitudes

Acknowledgments

Some of the data in this manuscript were previously presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the Collaborative Perspectives on Addiction in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Declaration of interest

No potential conflicts of interest was disclosed by the authors.

Notes

1 The study collected information on a total of five locations: home/dorm, bar, fraternity/sorority party, non-fraternity/sorority party, and sporting event. Frequencies of any drinking in each location were as follows: 72% drank at home/dorm, 44% drank at a non-fraternity/sorority party, 38% drank at a bar, 13% drank at a fraternity/sorority party, and 19% drank at a sporting event in the past 30 days. Two drinking locations—fraternity/sorority parties and sporting events—were not included in further analyses due to (a) low endorsement of drinking in these locations (less than one-third of participants) and (b) high skewness and kurtosis remaining for personal alcohol use even after recoding outliers. Thus, all analyses were conducted only with respect to drinking locations of home/dorm, bar, and parties (non-fraternity/sorority parties).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (K01AA022938) to Dr. Jennifer Merrill