Alcohol Policy in Europe Chapter 4. Popular norms, alcohol policy and drinking behaviour CHAPTER 4. POPULAR NORMS, ALCOHOL POLICY AND DRINKING BEHAVIOUR

The aim of this chapter is to study the dynamics between the informal rules (norms) for alcohol consumption and the formal rules (alcohol policy) in different parts of Europe. The norms for drinking were measured by a method which had proved efficient to show changes over time in drinking norms in Norway. The same method was supposed to be applicable for measuring differences in norms between countries. The method was to present 18 descriptions of drinking behaviour to representative samples of the populations in seven countries representing different alcohol cultures in Europe. The descriptions were obtained by systematically varying three levels of frequency, three levels of intoxication and two levels of sociability (alone or with friends). The respondents were asked if they would characterize each of the described drinking behaviours as “alcohol abuse ” or not. The mean number of descriptions characterized as “abuse ” is seen as an indication of the general “normative climate ” for alcohol consumption in each country. The formal rules, or more precisely the comprehensiveness and strictness of the alcohol policy in each country, was measured by a new scale developed within the AMPHORA project by Karlsson, Lindeman and Österberg (2013). A comparison of these two types of rules showed a complementary relation: where the norms are strict the policy is more liberal, and vice versa. A similarity in the “normative climate ” between neighbouring countries was also shown, indicating that areas of relatively uniform alcohol cultures exist in different parts of Europe