Situational Peer effects on Adolescents’ Alcohol Consumption: The Moderating Role of Supervision, Activity Structure, and Personal Moral Rules

ABSTRACT

Using five waves of unique space-time budget data, this study investigates the relevance of peer presence and behavior on adolescents’ alcohol consumption at a situational level, addressing to which degree these situational peer effects are moderated by the setting and by individual differences. Multilevel models, predicting the probability of alcohol consumption in a given hour, show that peers’ alcohol misuse is most relevant during unstructured activities while unsupervised. However, individuals differ in their susceptibility to these situational processes, with adolescents holding strong moral convictions against alcohol consumption being basically immune to situational peer effects, even during unstructured and unsupervised activities.

Acknowledgments

This paper was first drafted during a research stay at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge (UK). Financial assistance by the German Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. Per-Olof Wikström, Clemens Kroneberg, Beth Hardie, Alex Sutherland, Sonja Schulz and Nicole Bögelein gave very helpful comments on prior drafts of the paper. I am indebted to the whole team of the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study for their kind and excellent support.

Notes

¹ While both, the routine activity approach as well as an action-theoretic framework based on the MFS and SAT, expect activity structure and supervision to be relevant factors in explaining adolescents’ alcohol consumption, it should be noted that the postulated processes differ between these theories. While the MFS and SAT mainly stress the importance of perceived action alternatives, the routine activity approach mainly focuses on the associated costs related to alcohol consumption given unsuitable circumstances (i.e., interrupting structured activities; deterrence of guardians present; see Osgood et al. 1996). These differences are irrelevant with regard to the research question at hand and are therefore not discussed in more detail.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Harald Beier

Dr. Harald Beier is a Research Associate at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne. His current research is mainly focused on deviant and criminal behavior of adolescents, with a particular emphasis on the peer group, current theories of action, and subcultural approaches.