Drinking (wine) again: always the same, even in a pandemic?

ABSTRACT

The present research explores the role of wine’s social and coping benefits during stressful times (e.g. COVID-19 shutdown). This research operationalizes one factor that captures perceived value from wine due to social benefits and a second factor that captures the perceived value from wine due to benefits that help one cope with anxious times. A research framework is proposed and explored using mediation analyses. Results across two studies suggest that life situations relate to both wine’s social value and need for coping. Both wine's social value and coping value help drive wine consumption.

KEYWORDS:

• Wine
• value
• anxiety
• social benefits
• pandemic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Given that the control variables and the independent variable could be correlated, variance-inflation factors (VIFs) were computed for all predictors. The highest VIF is 1.376 suggesting no reason for concern of bias due to multicollinearity.

2 The direct effect of age on wine consumption in a simple regression is 0.187 (p = 0.004) and the small change with the inclusion of the mediators suggest the absence of mediation.