Attention to Alcohol Advertising Causes Elevated Consumption via Increased Alcohol-Related Craving
Summary and Key Findings
Alcohol marketing is everywhere: online, in the public space, on billboards and at sporting events. Science is showing that exposure to alcohol advertising is linked with earlier initiation of alcohol consumption and increased alcohol consumption.
But not everyone responds to adverts in the same way, says researcher Dr Daniel Rudaizky, in an IAS blog post. He is an academic at the School of Population Health and the enAble Institute, Curtin University, and the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Western Australia.
In a new study, researchers around Dr Rudaizky answered the question of what makes some people more susceptible to alcohol advertising than others?
Their new study, published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, shows that a key part of the answer lies in where people direct their attention. The more attention a person pays to alcohol adverts, the more that person craves alcohol, and the more alcohol that person consumes.
How the study is designed
The researchers brought participants into the lab and showed them video clips in which a beer advert and a soft drink advert played side by side.
Crucially, the researchers didn’t just observe. They experimentally manipulated attention. Half the participants were nudged to pay more attention to the beer adverts, and the other half to the soft drink adverts.
Then they measured how much participants craved beer and how much participants actually consumed beer in a taste test.
Attention drives craving, and craving drives alcohol consumption
Participants who were nudged to pay more attention to beer adverts reported stronger cravings for beer and went on to consume more beer. Participants directed toward the soft drink adverts did not show this pattern.
Importantly, further analysis showed that the effect on alcohol consumption was driven by craving. Paying more attention to alcohol adverts increased craving, and that increased craving led to higher consumption. This wasn’t just a correlation. By experimentally controlling where people looked, the researchers could establish that attention plays a causal role in this chain.
This is an important first step.
Previous research had shown that people who spontaneously pay more attention to alcohol cues tend to consume more alcohol, but those studies couldn’t rule out the possibility that people who already crave alcohol simply look at adverts more.
This study design flips this on its head: the researchers changed where people directed their attention first, and then observed the downstream effects on craving and alcohol consumption.
It is the first experimental evidence for this causal pathway in the context of alcohol advertising.
Why this matters for alcohol marketing policy
For those working to improve protections against alcohol marketing exposure, this finding adds a new piece to the evidence base. The case for banning alcohol advertising has traditionally rested on the well-established link between advertising exposure and alcohol consumption behaviour.
This new study begins to go further by identifying a specific mechanism through which adverts may exert their influence: they capture attention, which triggers craving, which drives consumption.
If attention is the entry point, then the sheer visibility of alcohol marketing in everyday life becomes a direct concern.
Dr Daniel Rudaizky
This is a single study, and more research is needed before drawing firm policy conclusions. But if this mechanism holds up, it has practical implications. If attention is the entry point, then the sheer visibility of alcohol marketing in everyday life becomes a direct concern. Every advert competing for a person’s gaze in a pub, on a bus, or during a football match is a potential trigger for this attention-craving-consumption chain.
It may also strengthen the case for reducing the volume and prominence of alcohol advertising, not just its content. Alcohol marketing standards that focus solely on what adverts say or depict may not go far enough, according to Dr Daniel Rudaizky.
The study findings raise the possibility that even adverts framed as “responsible” could still drive craving and consumption if they successfully capture attention, which is, after all, exactly what advertising is designed to do.
Key finding
Alcohol advertising works, in part, because it captures attention. And the study findings suggest that attention can trigger a chain reaction, from craving to consumption, that people may not even be aware of.
Much more research is needed, but for policymakers and public health advocates, these early results point in a clear direction: when it comes to alcohol marketing, reducing visibility may be just as important as regulating content.
Abstract
Objective
Alcohol advertising can induce craving and increase the consumption of alcohol, though individuals vary in their susceptibility. Recent findings suggest that attentional allocation toward alcohol adverts predicts subsequent alcohol craving and consumption. However, methodological limitations leave key issues unresolved, including whether attention to alcohol adverts causally impacts craving and consumption.
This study tested the hypothesis that attentional allocation to alcohol adverts increases their impact on alcohol consumption via craving using an attentional manipulation approach.
Method
Seventy-one undergraduate students, who reported enjoying consuming beer, were exposed to beer and soft drink adverts in a dual advert viewing task designed to manipulate attentional allocation toward or away from beer adverts.
Following advert viewing, relative craving for beer versus soft drinks and preferential beer consumption were assessed. A mediation model examined whether this attentional manipulation influenced consumption via craving.
Results
The attentional manipulation was successful, with participants in the “attend beer adverts” condition displaying a disproportionate attentional allocation toward beer adverts and those in the “avoid beer adverts” condition showing a disproportionate attentional allocation away from beer adverts. Mediation analysis, employing bootstrapped confidence intervals, confirmed that the attentional manipulation influenced beer consumption following advert viewing via its effect on beer craving.
Conclusions
These findings provide evidence that attentional allocation toward alcohol adverts causally influences alcohol consumption following advert exposure, mediated by its impact on alcohol craving. The researchers discuss the implications of these findings for targeted interventions to mitigate the potentially harmful effects of alcohol advertising.