'Binge' drinking in the UK: a social network phenomenon

TL;DR

This paper investigates the rise of binge drinking in the UK among youth, modeling it as a social network phenomenon driven by imitation and social influence, with implications for urban anti-social behavior.

Contribution

It introduces an agent-based model incorporating social network effects and externalities to explain binge drinking as a fashion-related spread among young people.

Findings

Small world networks best fit the data

Imitative behavior spreads through social networks

Binge drinking is driven by social influence and fashion trends

Abstract

We analyse the recent rapid growth of 'binge' drinking in the UK. This means the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, especially by young people, leading to serious anti-social and criminal behaviour in urban centres. We show how a simple agent-based model, based on binary choice with externalities, combined with a small amount of survey data can explain the phenomenon. We show that the increase in binge drinking is a fashion-related phenomenon, with imitative behaviour spreading across socila networks The results show that a small world network, rather than a random or scale free, offers the best description of the key aspects of the data