Abstract
BackgroundAvailability is an important predictor of early and excessive alcohol consumption by adolescents. Many countries have implemented age limits to prevent underage purchases of alcohol. However, shop-floor compliance with these age limits appears to be problematic. This study addresses the issue of non-compliance with age limits. Which measures do vendors take to avoid underage alcohol sales, and what do they report as important reasons to comply or not with age limits for alcohol sales?MethodsOpen-ended telephone interviews were conducted with store managers selling alcohol (N = 106). Prior to the interviews, all outlets were visited by an underage mystery shopper in order to measure compliance with the legal age limits on alcohol sales. The interview results are compared against actual compliance rates.ResultsSeveral measures have been taken to prevent underage sales, but the compliance level is low. Furthermore, open coding resulted in 19 themes, representing both valid and invalid arguments, that vendors mentioned as relevant to their decisions of whether to comply with the law. Compliance with age limits is dependent on the knowledge of the rules and the ability and motivation to follow the rules. The ability aspect in particular seems to be problematic, but in many cases, the motivation to actively comply with the age limits is lacking.ConclusionsTo enhance compliance, it is important to raise the awareness of the importance of age limits and to connect possible violations of the regulations to negative consequences.
Highlights
Availability is an important predictor of early and excessive alcohol consumption by adolescents
Several studies identified context factors that may influence compliance with age limits, such as characteristics of the general establishment, the interior of the premises, vendor characteristics, buyer characteristics, and characteristics associated with the purchase attempt itself [11]
Especially establishment characteristics and characteristics associated with the purchase attempt itself seem to be related to the likelihood of illegal alcohol sales to minors, more so than for example any vendor or buyer characteristics [11]
Summary
Availability is an important predictor of early and excessive alcohol consumption by adolescents. Several studies identified context factors that may influence compliance with age limits, such as characteristics of the general establishment (e.g., type of license, location of the establishment), the interior of the premises (e.g., busyness, signs in the store), vendor characteristics (e.g., gender, age), buyer characteristics (e.g., gender, educational level), and characteristics associated with the purchase attempt itself (e.g., time of visit) [11]. The effects of several interventions aimed at improving compliance were tested using preand post-intervention assessments, for example for educational and training interventions [22,23,24,25,26], raising the purchase age [23], intensifying enforcement [16,22,24], personal feedback on shop-floor compliance [25], mass media campaigns [26], or technical solutions [27,28]. To summarize the main findings: only providing information (training and campaigns) has minimal effects, while raising the minimum legal drinking age, enforcement, feedback and technical solutions appear promising interventions to increase age verification and subsequently compliance
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