Drinking motives as mediators of the relationship of cultural orientation with alcohol use and alcohol-related negative consequences in college students from seven countries

Abstract

Past research has examined the association of cultural orientation with drinking motives, alcohol use, and alcohol-related problems, mainly, at the country level or in participants from a single region. This study examined the indirect associations of features of cultural orientation (i.e., vertical individualism, vertical collectivism, horizontal individualism, horizontal collectivism; VI, VC, HI, and HC, respectively) with alcohol use and alcohol-related negative consequences, via drinking motives in college students from seven countries. A total of 4093 participants (72.8% female, 27.2% male) across seven countries (USA, Canada, Spain, England, South Africa, Argentina, and Uruguay) completed an online survey that assessed alcohol use and experienced alcohol-related negative consequences, drinking motives, and cultural orientation. A path analysis (Mplus 8.3 software) examined the associations of the proposed model. VI was significantly indirectly associated with alcohol use and alcohol-related negative consequences, mainly via positive reinforcement motives. VC and HC were indirectly associated with alcohol use and alcohol-related negative consequences via conformity motives, although the association was negative for HC and positive for VC. Most of the associations between variables were invariant across countries with the exception of five paths (alcohol use → alcohol-related negative consequences; enhancement motives → alcohol-related negative consequences; enhancement motives → alcohol use; VI → conformity motives; HC → conformity motives). Overall, our findings suggest that the vertical component of individualism and the horizontal component of collectivism might operate as risk or protective factors, respectively. The small effect sizes of some paths suggest that other variables could mediate the association of cultural orientation with alcohol use and/or alcohol-related problems.