Young people's alcohol consumption in public drinking places: reasoned behaviour or related to the situation?

Two contrasting perspectives are used to study correlates of young people's (16-25 years) alcohol consumption in public drinking places. One perspective is the theory of reasoned behaviour, or the Fishbein-Ajzen model, extended with self-efficacy. The other perspective assumes that exposure to drinking situations and aspects of the actual drinking situation (size of drinking group and group pressure) determine young people's alcohol consumption. Multiple regression analysis shows that variables indicating situational influences are correlated with the alcohol consumption of young men and women, even when controlling for the Fishbein-Ajzen variables. Among young men frequency of visiting public drinking places contributes more to the explained variance than the four Fishbein-Ajzen variables together. Young people's alcohol consumption in public drinking places appears to be less fully controlled by alcohol-specific beliefs, norms and perceived skills than the Fishbein-Ajzen model assumes. The Fishbein-Ajzen variables are only weakly correlated with the variables indicating situational influences. It is concluded that, from the individual's perspective, the influence of situational factors means that part of his consumption is determined by more or less accidental circumstances like the opportunities to drink, the size of the drinking group and group pressure.