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Alcohol ads in sport fuel drinking culture - Monash University
30 Apr 2019 12:01 AM
Repeated exposure to
alcohol advertising in sport – either at venues or during media coverage of
matches – can have long-term effects on drinking attitudes, according to a new
international study.
Researchers from the
Parisien Laboratory of Social Psychology, the University Grenoble of Alpes
(France) and Monash University found a positive and casual link between alcohol
sponsorship and alcohol-related attitudes, as well as the specific brand being
advertised.
The study, titled “How
alcohol advertising and sponsorship works – effects through indirect measures”,
was published today (Tuesday, 30 April, 2019) in Drug and Alcohol Review.
The alcohol industry
accounts for roughly 20% of all sport sponsorships internationally. This is
despite evidence showing that direct alcohol sponsorship of sport is associated
with more hazardous drinking, and that large numbers of children are exposed to
alcohol messages while watching sport.
“What we showed is
that alcohol advertising and sponsorship not only send a message directly
encouraging people to drink, but tends to implicitly and/or unconsciously associate
a product, like beer, within a specific context of going to the football or
watching a sports match on television,” said the study’s co-author, Professor
Kerry O’Brien, from Monash University’s School of Social Sciences.
Study lead Dr
Oulmann Zerhouni reported that: “We also found that exposing people to an
alcohol brand, and more strongly to a mainstream alcohol brand, leads to more
positive attitudes towards alcohol more generally.
“Our results suggest
that alcohol advertising and sponsorship exposure may change attitudes in an
automatic fashion, because it doesn’t require an individual to cognitively
process the advertising stimuli.”
As part of the
study, 109 students from France were exposed to 10 minutes of a rugby match
featuring one of three sponsorship conditions: a globally renowned beer; a
domestic beer; or motor oil.
Researchers tested
whether incidental exposure to alcohol marketing messages influenced their
evaluation of brands and alcohol in general, and whether these decision-making
processes occurred naturally. Alcohol consumption immediately following the
experiment wasn’t analysed.
“We found evidence
to suggest that the more popular the brand of alcohol, the greater the
influence in changes to participants’ drinking attitudes. This wasn’t the case
when the alcohol brand was relatively unknown, or if the sponsorship was
unrelated to alcohol, in this case motor oil,” Dr Zerhouni said.
Because sports fans
are repeatedly exposed to alcohol advertising and sponsorship when watching
sport, Professor O’Brien said this was likely to have a long-term effect on
their drinking that needed to be understood and addressed.
“This is especially
important for countries that allow alcohol marketing in sport programming
during the day, when we know hundreds of thousands of children are watching,”
he said.
The study was led
by Dr Oulmann Zerhouni from the Parisien Laboratory of Social Psychology, with
support from Dr Laurent Begue (University Grenoble of Alpes) and Professor Kerry
O’Brien, Behavioural Sciences Research Laboratory (Monash University).
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