Besides the drinking in alcohol's harm to others: potential economic and environmental factors.

Abstract

Introduction: This paper considers how harm from others' drinking is distributed across several economic and environmental factors.

Method: Economic, environmental, demographic and drinking measures include: household income, financial disadvantage indicators, home spaciousness; neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES), connections and safety; and respondent's gender, age group and risky drinking status. The paper explores interactions of these factors with harms from the drinking of others in a 2021 survey of 2574 Australian adults.

Results: The home's degree of crowding (persons per bedroom) is related to harms from others in the household, while financial disadvantage is related to harm from drinkers outside the household, whether known or strangers. Perceived neighbourhood safety and knowing neighbours are negatively related to harms from the drinking of others outside the household. In multivariate analyses for harms from household members and from strangers, these findings are little affected by three individual factors related to harms from others' drinking: the respondent's gender, age group and risky drinking status.

Discussion: Some economic and ecological factors play an important role in the occurrence of harms from others' drinking, but the relationship varies both between factors and by the category of other person involved.