Dark Side or Bright Side: The Impact of Alcohol Drinking on the Trust of Chinese Rural Residents

Abstract

Existing studies have explored the causal effect of social capital on harmful drinking, while the effect of drinking habits on trust is scant. In China, drinking rituals and drinking culture are considered important ways of promoting social interaction and trust, especially in rural areas where traditional culture is stronger. Based on a field survey in rural China in 2019, this paper explores the relationship between drinking habits and trust. First, we found a negative relationship between drinking habits and trust, indicating that those people who drink alcohol are more likely to have a lower trust. Second, we found significant heterogeneity in the effect of alcohol consumption on social trust across various groups. Specifically, the negative effects of alcohol consumption on trust were stronger for the females than for males; drinking alcohol did not reduce the level of trust among the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in rural China; compared with the Han nationality, we found that the effect of drinking on trust was not significant for the ethnic minority. Third, we observed that the negative effects of alcohol consumption on trust had thresholds across age and income. Among people under 51, the risk of trust from drinking was greater than for those over 51; the negative effect of drinking on residents’ trust was more obvious in low-income families, but not significant in the group with an annual household income of more than CNY 40,000. Our empirical study provides a deeper understanding of drinking culture in rural China from a dialectical perspective.

Development and Performance Evaluation of an IoT-Integrated Breath Analyzer

“…For instance, in a previously documented systematic review by our team, it was revealed there is a strong correlation between alcohol consumption patterns and age, proximity to alcohol outlets, familial backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, and religious influences [7]. Similarly, other recent records documented the social determinants of alcohol use and its consequences among communities [8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…To evaluate the performance of the quantification algorithm, the following performance metrics were used: (1) mean square error (MSE), ( 2) root mean square error (RMSE), (3) mean absolute error (MAE), ( 4) the coefficient of determination (R 2 ), (5) the accuracy percentage (Accuracy%), ( 6) the standard deviation, and ( 7) the relative standard deviation (%RSD), shown in Equations ( 5)- (11), respectively. The values of BrAC e and BrAC a refer to the predicted BrAC obtained from the algorithm and the actual BrAC, respectively.…”