Social Interactions in Alcohol-Impaired Driving

ABSTRACT

This study attempts to analyze the existence and magnitude of social interactions in alcohol-impaired driving among Spanish adolescents. Using a wave of data collected from 25,473 Spanish students between 14 and 18 years old, we estimate the cross-sectional association between alcohol-impaired driving and several predictors. We examine the prevalence of this behavior among classmates, which requires the use of two-stage least squares to deal with the endogeneity of the peer variable. The alcohol-impaired driving behavior of classmates is associated with a higher probability of being involved in the same behavior, and we find that this behavior is positively associated with the father drinking.

KEYWORDS:

• adolescents
• alcohol
• driving
• social interactions

Funding

The authors are grateful for financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economics (Project ECO2012-34828).