New beverages, new drinking contexts? Signs of modernization in Finnish drinking habits from 1984 to 1992, compared with trends in the European Community.

Abstract

The dynamics of change in drinking patterns is discussed using the data from the drinking habits surveys conducted in Finland in 1984 and 1992. The results are compared with a respective analysis on the EU countries from 1988 by Hupkens, Knibbe & Drop (1993). The analysis is based on changes in beverage preferences. In the Finnish case, both wine and mild beer appear as new beverages, gaining popularity in the late 1980s. For beer, both the elites and the population at large were involved in that process. For wine, the interest in the new beverage was stronger among the elites. There were notable gender differences in adopting the new beverage. Some of the differences were related to the older cultural patterns of wine as a woman's drink and beer as a male beverage. The results also point to difficulties in analysing the dynamics of change on the basis of cross-sectional data, as was done in the earlier analysis on the EC countries. The Finnish data shows that even the inter-group dynamics of drinking patterns may change over a relatively short period of time.