EVIDENCE LIBRARY
Does Alcohol Change the Price of Waiting for Money? A 77-Person Decision Experiment
An economic experiment linked alcohol exposure to greater compensation demanded for delayed payment. The result was stronger in adjusted models than simple group comparisons and did not measure driving decisions.
One experiment found that alcohol exposure was associated with demanding more compensation to wait for a monetary payment. The statistical support was stronger in adjusted concentration-based models than in simple alcohol-placebo comparisons. This was a measure of time preference, not proof that a particular driver became impatient or reckless.
How the three groups were formed
Corazzini and colleagues studied 77 people, mostly university economics students. Thirty-nine attended sessions involving a possible alcoholic drink; twenty were randomly assigned alcohol and nineteen a placebo. Another thirty-eight attended separate sessions without any reference to alcohol.
The alcohol-placebo assignment was randomized within the drinking experiment. The separate no-alcohol-reference group differed in recruitment information and procedures, so all three groups should not be described as one fully randomized comparison.
Exposure was monitored with a breath analyzer that reported blood-alcohol equivalents. Mean initial values were approximately 0.596 grams per liter in the alcohol group and 0.017 in the placebo group. These were breath-derived estimates, not direct blood measurements. The placebo included a small quantity of spirits around the glass and drink surface.
The task priced a delay, not a driving maneuver
Participants were offered a twenty-euro cash-card transfer scheduled one hour after the experiment. They specified the extra amount required to postpone payment by one, seven or eight days. An incentive-compatible bidding procedure made a selected decision potentially consequential for payment.
The mean extra amount demanded for a seven-day delay was 11.13 euros in the alcohol group and 7.84 after placebo. For an eight-day delay, the corresponding means were 13.10 and 9.74 euros.
Requiring more compensation to wait was interpreted as greater impatience. That interpretation depends on the monetary task and its assumptions; it is not a direct observation of impulsive driving or inability to follow instructions.
Simple comparisons and adjusted models gave different strength of evidence
The direct nonparametric alcohol-placebo comparisons for seven- and eight-day premiums had p values approximately .098. They did not meet the conventional .05 threshold. The one-day comparison was also not significant.
Models using measured exposure and repeated payment-delay choices found a significant negative association between alcohol concentration and a derived patience measure. That association remained after controls including age, sex, risk attitude, willingness to pay and optimism.
The authors also reported that replacing concentration with a simple alcohol-versus-placebo indicator weakened significance from the five-percent to the ten-percent level. This sensitivity belongs in the interpretation rather than being hidden behind a categorical claim that alcohol always increases impatience.
Time preference was separate from lottery risk preference
The experiment also elicited valuations of lotteries. It did not find a significant overall alcohol effect on the principal risk-aversion measure.
Thus, wanting earlier payment and accepting a risky lottery did not show the same pattern. Neither outcome should be substituted for all forms of “impulsivity.” The donation findings were also outcome-specific rather than a demonstrated general loss of altruism.
Limits for a DUI opinion
The small alcohol and placebo groups, student sample and fixed task sequence limit generalization. The payment-delay task occurred last, and exposure was not continuously measured throughout every decision. The models explained only part of the variation between people.
No driving, crash, lane-control or waiting-in-traffic outcome was measured. The results can inform a discussion of decision processes, but cannot reconstruct someone’s BAC or establish why a particular maneuver occurred.
The site’s certainty-choice and working-memory experiment examines another dimension of decision-making. Keeping the tasks separate avoids treating every alcohol-related choice as evidence of the same deficit.
Primary source
Corazzini L, Filippin A, Vanin P. Economic Behavior under the Influence of Alcohol: An Experiment on Time Preferences, Risk-Taking, and Altruism. PLOS ONE. 2015;10:e0121530. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0121530.