Italy Between Drinking Culture and Control Policies for Alcoholic Beverages

Abstract

This paper focuses on whether the on-going dramatic decrease in alcohol consumption in Italy, especially of wine, during 1961-2008, was associated with which parallel sociodemographic and economic changes and with alcohol control policies. The study, using both time series (TS) and artificial neural network (ANN)-based analyses documents that its selected sociodemographic and economic factors, and particularly urbanization, had a definite connection with wine consumption decrease, spirits decrease, and the increase in beer consumption over time. On the other hand, control policies showed no effect on the decline in alcohol consumption, since no alcohol control policy existed in Italy between 1960 and 1987. A few policies introduced since 1988 (BAC and sale restrictions during mass events) may have contributed to reducing or to maintaining the on-going reduction. Study limitations are noted and future needed research is suggested.

Trends in Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages and Policy Interventions in Europe: An Uncertainty “Associated” Perspective

“…One of the aims of the AMPHORA project was to demonstrate the relevance of the impact of sociodemographic and economic factors in a country (Allamani, Pepe, Baccini, Massini, & Voller, 2014;Allamani et al, 2011;AMPHORA, 2013, and the articles in this special issue). However, other aspects can be identified, which were only partially taken into account by the AMPHORA study: factors of migration, religious and political, major sociopolitical events, i.e.…”

Analyzing and Comparing the Association Between Control Policy Measures and Alcohol Consumption in Europe

“…In order to reduce the problem complexity, we investigated for each country a restricted set of policies. In particular, for each country, the most relevant interventions introduced during the study period, for a maximum of six, were a priori identified by a team of experts (see Allamani et al, 2014). Moreover, after having defined five different policy typologies, we classified the selected policies according to this partition.…”

“…In Allamani, Pepe, Baccini, Massini, and Voller (2014), the results are presented concerning the relative importance of unplanned contextual variables and policy measures on changes in alcohol consumption during the study period in the 12 countries. In that paper, the association between each intervention and the outcome was examined trough time series regressions, where the policies were included one at time, adjusting for the unplanned variables (see the country-specific analysis described in Baccini & Carreras, 2014).…”

Analyzing the Effect of Selected Control Policy Measures and SocioDemographic Factors on Alcoholic Beverage Consumption in Europe within the AMPHORA Project: Statistical Methods

“…Relying on the importance of the economic factors in determining changes on alcoholic beverage consumption (see e.g., Nelson, 2010), we included in the model income and price of the two alcoholic beverages which were, on average most often drunk over the study's period (see Allamani et al, 2014 for more detail). We took into account the demographic age structure of the population through the percentage of men over 65 years of age (Nelson, 2010;Nelson & Young, 2001).…”

“…The complete results are presented in the paper by Allamani, Pepe, Baccini, Massini, and Voller (2014) and in the paper by Baccini & Carreras (2014), where a description of the meta-analysis model adopted to combine the country-specific findings is also provided.…”