IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0121530.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic Behavior under the Influence of Alcohol: An Experiment on Time Preferences, Risk-Taking, and Altruism

Author

Listed:
  • Luca Corazzini
  • Antonio Filippin
  • Paolo Vanin

Abstract

We report results from an incentivized laboratory experiment undertaken with the purpose of providing controlled evidence on the causal effects of alcohol consumption on risk-taking, time preferences and altruism. Our design disentangles the pharmacological effects of alcohol intoxication from those mediated by expectations, as we compare the behavior of three groups of subjects: those who participated in an experiment with no reference to alcohol, those who were exposed to the possibility of consuming alcohol but were given a placebo and those who effectively consumed alcohol. All subjects participated in a series of economic tasks administered in the same sequence across treatments. After controlling for both the willingness to pay for an object and the potential misperception of probabilities as elicited in the experiment, we detect no effect of alcohol in depleting subjects’ risk tolerance. However, we find that alcohol intoxication increases impatience and makes subjects less altruistic.

Suggested Citation

  • Luca Corazzini & Antonio Filippin & Paolo Vanin, 2015. "Economic Behavior under the Influence of Alcohol: An Experiment on Time Preferences, Risk-Taking, and Altruism," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-25, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0121530
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121530
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121530
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121530&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0121530?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Filippin, Antonio & Crosetto, Paolo, 2014. "A Reconsideration of Gender Differences in Risk Attitudes," IZA Discussion Papers 8184, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Lundborg, Petter, 2006. "Having the wrong friends? Peer effects in adolescent substance use," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 214-233, March.
    3. David K. Levine & Drew Fudenberg, 2006. "A Dual-Self Model of Impulse Control," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1449-1476, December.
    4. Pinka Chatterji & Jeff DeSimone, 2005. "Adolescent Drinking and High School Dropout," NBER Working Papers 11337, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Martina MENON & Federico PERALI, 2009. "Eliciting Risk and Time Preferences in Field Experiments: Are They Related to Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Outcomes? Are Circumstances Important?," Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, vol. 117(3), pages 593-630.
    6. JEFF DeSIMONE, 2009. "Fraternity Membership And Drinking Behavior," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(2), pages 337-350, April.
    7. Michael Kremer & Dan Levy, 2008. "Peer Effects and Alcohol Use among College Students," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(3), pages 189-206, Summer.
    8. Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Vanin, 2013. "Bowling alone, drinking together," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1635-1672, June.
    9. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    10. B. Douglas Bernheim & Antonio Rangel, 2004. "Addiction and Cue-Triggered Decision Processes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1558-1590, December.
    11. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    12. Duarte, R. & Escario, J.J., 2006. "Alcohol abuse and truancy among Spanish adolescents: A count-data approach," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 179-187, April.
    13. Angela K. Dills, 2004. "Alcohol Prohibition and Cirrhosis," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 6(2), pages 285-318.
    14. Miraldo, M & Galizzi, MM, 2012. "Are you what you eat? Experimental evidence on risk preferences and health habits," Working Papers 9792, Imperial College, London, Imperial College Business School.
    15. Steven F. Koch & Kerry Anne McGeary, 2005. "The Effect of Youth Alcohol Initiation on High School Completion," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(4), pages 750-765, October.
    16. Markowitz, Sara, 2005. "Alcohol, Drugs and Violent Crime," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 20-44, March.
    17. Matthew Rabin, 2000. "Risk Aversion and Expected-Utility Theory: A Calibration Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1281-1292, September.
    18. Michael Grossman & Sarah Markowitz, 2005. "I Did What Last Night? Adolescent Risky Sexual Behaviors and Substance Abuse," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 383-405, Summer.
    19. Vital Anderhub & Werner Güth & Uri Gneezy & Doron Sonsino, 2001. "On the Interaction of Risk and Time Preferences: An Experimental Study," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 2(3), pages 239-253, August.
    20. Pinka Chatterji & Jeffrey DeSimone, 2006. "High School Alcohol Use and Young Adult Labor Market Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 12529, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Daniel Burghart & Paul Glimcher & Stephanie Lazzaro, 2013. "An expected utility maximizer walks into a bar..," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 215-246, June.
    22. Dee, Thomas S., 1999. "State alcohol policies, teen drinking and traffic fatalities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 289-315, May.
    23. DeSimone, Jeff, 2007. "Fraternity membership and binge drinking," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 950-967, September.
    24. W. David Bradford & Paul Dolan & Matteo M. Galizzi, 2019. "Looking ahead: Subjective time perception and individual discounting," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 43-69, February.
    25. Anderson, Lisa R. & Mellor, Jennifer M., 2008. "Predicting health behaviors with an experimental measure of risk preference," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 1260-1274, September.
    26. Steven D. Levitt & Jack Porter, 2001. "How Dangerous Are Drinking Drivers?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1198-1237, December.
    27. Sara Markowitz & Robert Kaestner & Michael Grossman, 2005. "An Investigation of the Effects of Alcohol Consumption and Alcohol Policies on Youth Risky Sexual Behaviors," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 263-266, May.
    28. Robert B. Barsky & F. Thomas Juster & Miles S. Kimball & Matthew D. Shapiro, 1997. "Preference Parameters and Behavioral Heterogeneity: An Experimental Approach in the Health and Retirement Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 537-579.
    29. Daniel J. Benjamin & Sebastian A. Brown & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2013. "Who Is ‘Behavioral’? Cognitive Ability And Anomalous Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(6), pages 1231-1255, December.
    30. W. David Bradford & Paul Dolan & Matteo M. Galizzi, 2014. "Looking Ahead: Subjective Time Perception and Individual Time Discounting," CEP Discussion Papers dp1255, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Cabrales, Antonio & Mateu, Guillermo & Sánchez, Angel & Sutan, Angela, 2023. "Social interaction and negotiation outcomes: An experimental approach," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    2. Fielding, David & Knowles, Stephen & Robertson, Kirsten, 2018. "Alcohol, generosity and empathy," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 28-39.
    3. Daniel Houser & Jianxin Wang, 2021. "Business Drinking: Evidence from A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment," Working Papers 1074, George Mason University, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science.
    4. Au, Pak Hung & Lim, Wooyoung & Zhang, Jipeng, 2022. "In vino veritas? Communication under the influence—An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 325-340.
    5. David Fielding & Stephen Knowles & Kirsten Robertson, 2017. "When does it matter how you ask? Cross-subject heterogeneity in framing effects in a charitable donation experiment," Working Papers 1701, University of Otago, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2017.
    6. Cabrales, Antonio & Brañas, Pablo & Mateu, Guillermo & Sánchez, Anxo & Sutan, Angela, 2018. "Does pre-play social interaction improve negotiation outcomes?," CEPR Discussion Papers 13417, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Long, Iain W & Matthews, Kent & Sivarajasingam, Vaseekaran, 2022. "Overconfidence, Alcohol and the Environment: Evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2022/6, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    8. Giuseppe Attanasi & James C. Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj, 2022. "Festival Games: Inebriated and Sober Altruists," GREDEG Working Papers 2022-39, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    9. Klajdi Bregu & Cary Deck & Lindsay Ham & Salar Jahedi, 2017. "The Effects of Alcohol Use on Economic Decision Making," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(4), pages 886-902, April.
    10. Khandeparkar, Kapil & Motiani, Manoj, 2020. "The effect of alcohol consumption and contextual cues on the evaluation of new brands of alcoholic beverages at the POS," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    11. Judd B. Kessler & Andrew McClellan & James Nesbit & Andrew Schotter, 2022. "Short-term fluctuations in incidental happiness and economic decision-making: experimental evidence from a sports bar," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(1), pages 141-169, February.
    12. Deck, Cary & Pate, Jennifer, 2022. "High time to study the relationship between marijuana use and economic behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 1-14.
    13. Au, Pak Hung & Zhang, Jipeng, 2016. "Deal or no deal? The effect of alcohol drinking on bargaining," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 70-86.
    14. David Fielding & Stephen Knowles & Kirsten Robertson, 2017. "Alcohol Expenditure, Generosity and Empathy," Working Papers 1711, University of Otago, Department of Economics, revised Dec 2017.
    15. Long, Iain W & Matthews, Kent & Sivarajasingam, Vaseekaran, 2019. "Behavioural Change and Alcohol-Fuelled Violence: A Field Experiment," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2019/9, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. L. Corazzini & A. Filippin & P. Vanin, 2014. "Economic Behavior under Alcohol Influence: An Experiment on Time, Risk, and Social Preferences," Working Papers wp944, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    2. Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Vanin, 2013. "Bowling alone, drinking together," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1635-1672, June.
    3. Klajdi Bregu & Cary Deck & Lindsay Ham & Salar Jahedi, 2017. "The Effects of Alcohol Use on Economic Decision Making," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(4), pages 886-902, April.
    4. Gerhardt, Holger & Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah & Willrodt, Jana, 2017. "Does self-control depletion affect risk attitudes?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 463-487.
    5. Daniel J. Benjamin & Sebastian A. Brown & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2013. "Who Is ‘Behavioral’? Cognitive Ability And Anomalous Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(6), pages 1231-1255, December.
    6. Lucks, Konstantin, 2016. "The Impact of Self-Control on Investment Decisions," MPRA Paper 73099, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    8. Drew Fudenberg & David K. Levine, 2011. "Risk, Delay, and Convex Self-Control Costs," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 34-68, August.
    9. Luigi Guiso, 2015. "A Test of Narrow Framing and its Origin," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 1(1), pages 61-100, March.
    10. Celse, Jeremy & Karakostas, Alexandros & Zizzo, Daniel John, 2023. "Relative risk taking and social curiosity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 243-264.
    11. Luigi Guiso & Monica Paiella, 2008. "Risk Aversion, Wealth, and Background Risk," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(6), pages 1109-1150, December.
    12. repec:cup:judgdm:v:14:y:2019:i:3:p:234-279 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Hardardottir, Hjördis, 2019. "Many Balls in the Air Make Time Fly: The Effect of Multitasking on Time Perception and Time Preferences," Working Papers 2019:11, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 17 Sep 2019.
    14. Lindo, Jason M. & Swensen, Isaac D. & Waddell, Glen R., 2013. "Alcohol and student performance: Estimating the effect of legal access," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 22-32.
    15. Cueva, Carlos & Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Iñigo & Mata-Pérez, Esther & Ponti, Giovanni & Sartarelli, Marcello & Yu, Haihan & Zhukova, Vita, 2016. "Cognitive (ir)reflection: New experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 81-93.
    16. Joshua Tasoff & Wenjie Zhang, 2022. "The Performance of Time-Preference and Risk-Preference Measures in Surveys," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1149-1173, February.
    17. He, Tai-Sen, 2017. "“I” make you risk-averse: The effect of first-person pronoun use in a lottery choice experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 39-42.
    18. Cappelletti, Dominique & Güth, Werner & Ploner, Matteo, 2011. "Being of two minds: Ultimatum offers under cognitive constraints," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 940-950.
    19. Ana I. Balsa & Néstor Gandelman & Nicolás González, 2015. "Peer Effects in Risk Aversion," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(1), pages 27-43, January.
    20. Jan Hausfeld & Sven Resnjanskij, 2017. "Risky Decisions and the Opportunity Costs of Time," TWI Research Paper Series 108, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    21. Jeffrey Butler & Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 2014. "The role of intuition and reasoning in driving aversion to risk and ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(4), pages 455-484, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0121530. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.