The Roles of Prevention Messages, Risk Perception, and Benefit Perception in Predicting Binge Drinking among College Students

ABSTRACT

To account for the effect of prevention-message exposure on binge drinking among college students, I hypothesized a conceptual model outlining potential mechanisms including perceived probability of negative consequences (PPNC), perceived severity of negative consequences (PSNC), perceived probability of positive consequences (PPPC), and perceived beneficiality of positive consequences (PBPC) from binge drinking, based on the two-step process model. I conducted an online survey at a public university in the US (N = 278). Findings suggested only PBPC was significantly related to binge drinking and the relationship was positive; prevention-message exposure was not directly associated with binge drinking, but was positively associated with PPNC, PSNC, PPPC, and PBPC; none of the mediational paths was significant; higher risk perception (interaction between PPNC and PSNC) was significantly related to less binge drinking, while benefit perception (interaction between PPPC and PBPC) was not predictive of binge drinking. Implications of findings were discussed.

Notes

¹ “Throughout these questions, by ‘a drink’ we mean a can or bottle of beer, a glass of wine or a wine cooler, a shot of liquor, or a mixed drink with liquor in it. We are not asking about times when you only had a sip or two from a drink. By ‘on the same occasion,’ we mean within a 2-hour period” (National Survey on Drug Use and Health [NSDUH] series, visit https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/series/64).

² The CFI and the TLI values larger than .90 and .95 are considered an acceptable and an excellent fit, respectively (Kline, 1998). The RMSEA values smaller than .05 and .08 are considered a close and a reasonable fit, respectively (McDonald & Ho, 2002).

³ A total of 288 cases were collected for the survey. Among them, six were incomplete cases and were removed from data analyses. Four participants’ responses to the question “During the past 2 weeks, on how many days did you have 4 or more drinks on the same occasion” were greater than 14, and they were considered outliers and were excluded from data analyses as well. These two procedures resulted in a total of 278 cases for final data analyses.

⁴ Preliminary examinations showed that all assumptions of structural equation modeling (linearity, multivariate normality, homoscedasticity) were met.