High Opportunity Cost Demand as an Indicator of Weekday Drinking and Distinctly Severe Alcohol Problems: A Behavioral Economic Analysis

Abstract

Introduction: Behavioral economic theory views addiction as a reinforcer pathology characterized by excessive demand for drugs relative to alternatives. Complementary to this theory, Lamb and Ginsburg (Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 164, 2018, 62) describe addiction as a behavioral allocation disorder and predict that decisions to drink under increasingly stringent constraints are a central indicator of addiction. This study used a modified demand-curve paradigm to examine alcohol demand in the context of a next-day contingency (high opportunity cost demand) as a specific indicator of a severe pattern of alcohol problems.Methods: Participants were 370 undergraduates (61.1% female, 86.5% white, M age = 18.8) reporting multiple past-month heavy drinking episodes (5/4 drinks per occasion for men/women) who completed 2 versions of an alcohol purchase task (APT), along with measures of past-month alcohol use and problems. In 1 APT (low opportunity cost), students imagined they had no next-day responsibilities, and in the other APT (high opportunity cost), they imagined having a 10:00 AM test the next day. Item-response theory analyses were used to determine mild and severe alcohol problems from the Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire (Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 67, 2006, 169), and the most and least severe binge drinking days throughout the week.Results: Low opportunity cost demand (b = 0.15, p = 0.02) significantly predicted beyond high opportunity cost demand for the least severe problems, and high opportunity cost demand (b = 0.17, p = 0.009) significantly predicted beyond low opportunity cost demand for the most severe problems. Similarly, low opportunity cost demand (b = 0.26, p < 0.001) was more highly associated with weekend drinking, whereas high opportunity cost demand (b = 0.21, p = 0.001) was more highly associated with weekday drinking.Conclusions: The current results suggest high opportunity cost alcohol demand is a distinct marker of severe alcohol problems among college student heavy drinkers.

Addictive behavior as molar behavioral allocation: Distinguishing efficient and final causes in translational research and practice.

“…For example, in an evaluation of change processes associated with a brief alcohol intervention (Murphy et al, 2019), emerging adults who reduced their drinking showed increased reinforcement from substance-free activities at follow-up, and changes in proportionate reinforcement related to substance-free activities mediated the relation between the intervention and reductions in alcohol use. Further, having substance-free next-day responsibilities (e.g., employment, classes, volunteer work) have been linked to lower alcohol demand, as measured by a behavioral economic task, the alcohol purchase task (Murphy & MacKillop, 2006), that quantifies hypothetical alcohol consumption and alcohol-related expenditures as a function of drink prices (Joyner et al, 2019). A review of clinical research on associations between social support and smoking (Fisher, 1996) supported conceptualizing both activities as commodities that could substitute for one another; specifically, social support is effective in reducing smoking, while it is available but this salutary substitution relationship diminishes when access is constrained.…”

Relative expected value of drugs versus competing rewards underpins vulnerability to and recovery from addiction

“…Thus, these concurrent choice studies contradict the prediction of compulsion theory that dependence is driven by a maladaptive S-R association that renders drug-seeking invulnerable to immediate punishment [ 17 ] (for a more extensive critique of compulsion theory see [ 22 , 51 ]). It is interesting to note that other studies that tested the impact of imagined next day responsibilities on measures of drug demand (willingness to pay for the drug), found evidence that dependence may be linked to insensitivity to these future costs [ [52] , [53] , [54] , [55] ]. Thus, dependence may be linked to an inability to incorporate future costs into decision making consistent with delay discounting models of addiction [ 21 ], but there is little evidence that dependence is linked to insensitivity to immediate costs, an observation that is inconsistent with compulsion theory [ 17 ].…”

Commentary on Martínez‐Loredo et al.: Where do we go from here? Increasing the clinical utility of alcohol purchase tasks by expanding our definition of constraint

“…In other words, an individual who drank four drinks last week may have drunk more if drinks were more available or if they had seen their friends. Although standard APTs define constraints as increasing price, a substantial literature has demonstrated that alcohol demand changes under a variety of other constraints [3], such as when one has to drive after drinking [4], when there is a next‐day responsibility (opportunity cost [5]) and when friends are no longer present [6].…”