Alcohol consumption and discounting

Abstract

This study addresses whether discounting of future rewards may have an impact on alcohol consumption and propensity to alcohol-related harms, by applying survey data among young people whose drinking career hardly may have affected their time preferences. Analyses from a school survey among 17,000, over 13–17 year olds in Norway showed that discount rates were positively associated with drinking frequency and intoxication frequency when age, gender, impulsivity and disposable income were controlled for. Moreover, the results suggested that having made choices under the influence of alcohol leading to a negative outcome (deliberate self-harm, drunk-driving, vandalism or use of narcotics) was significantly more prevalent among those with high-discount rates compared to others, also when controlling for alcohol consumption, age, gender and impulsivity. The results are discussed in relation to the potential role of discounting in pathways to addictive behaviour.

• Alcohol consumption
• discounting
• adolescents
• causal interpretation

Notes

Notes

1. Slightly various terms are applied, e.g. ‘delay discounting', ‘discounting of delayed rewards', ‘discounting of delayed reinforces', ‘devaluing the future' and ‘loss of subjective value for delayed outcomes'.

2. Bretteville-Jensen (1999) also applied a similar question to assess weekly discount rate, but found that with such a (relatively) short time frame, there was very little variation in the discount rate and few who were willing to sell the lottery ticket for a smaller amount. In Lundborg's (forthcoming) survey among adolescents the discounting question was open-ended, and he reported that 8% of the respondents did no answer the question and another 17% stated a higher amount than the lottery winning and hence gave an improbable answer. Consequently, in this study we applied the measure on annual discount rate and fixed response categories.