Behavioural Change and Alcohol-Fuelled Violence: A Field Experiment

Iain Long, Kent Matthews and Vaseekaran Sivarajasingam

No E2019/9, Cardiff Economics Working Papers from Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section

Abstract: We conduct a field experiment to assess whether alcohol-induced behavioural changes explain participants' recent history of violence. We find that being in a drinking environment, rather than intoxication, reduces participants' cognitive ability but increases their overconfidence. Those who experience small reductions in ability or become much more overconfident tended to have been involved in more violent incidents. Since these behavioural changes were largely unanticipated, our results suggest that individuals underestimate their true likelihood of becoming involved in violence when making alcohol consumption decisions. This presents additional challenges when formulating policy designed to deter alcohol-fuelled violence.

Keywords: Intoxication; over-optimism; violence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D91 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://carbsecon.com/wp/E2019_9.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2019/9

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cardiff Economics Working Papers from Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Yongdeng Xu ().