< Back to previous page

Project

‘Preloading’ amongst students: how much, what and why?

Drinking at university is a well-known phenomenon that is problematic not only because it might be excessive, but also because it happens at a period in time in which a student’s choices and successes might have a lasting effect on his entire life. In this respect, the practice of preloading (consuming alcohol before going to an event or participating in an activity where extra alcohol is consumed or not) is observed in many countries. Preloading seems to be associated with higher levels of intoxication, higher alcohol consumption, exhibiting risky behaviour, experiencing negative consequences such as blackouts or fighting and lifetime negative health consequences. Successful policy interventions to discourage preloading require knowing the motivations of students to drink. In this respect, while one of the main motives for students to pre-load seems to be ‘the ingestion of big quantities of alcohol at a relatively low price during socializing and networking’, little is known about students’ preferences towards specific drinks and the heterogeneity in these preferences as well as other motives for joining this activity. We combine detailed surveys about this practice with discrete choice experiments (DCE’s) and risk preferences elicitation tasks to collect data to investigate the profile of students who pre-load, why do they do so and how often. Furthermore, we aim at identifying the key characteristics that influence the likelihood of observing a given drinking pattern (low, average and high levels of alcohol intake). The preferences expressed in the DCE’s are further analysed along specific personal characteristics, such as gender, drinking habits and risk preferences amongst others.

Date:30 Nov 2018 →  30 Sep 2020
Keywords:preloading, students, drinking pattern, discrete choice experiments, specific personal characteristics
Disciplines:Social behaviour and social action, Cultural economics, economic sociology, economic anthropology