Continuing on from last week the goal has been to reach a point of focus within the research topic. The idea from last week was to conduct an analysis on the long run effects of education and price on alcohol consumption patterns nationally and then compare these results across countries. This was to figure out what countries have the best policies in place to combat heavy consumption of alcohol and the health related issues associated with it. There is an importance for conducting this research because of the burden excessive alcohol consumption has on individual’s health. This also has broader economic implications on GDP as people’s health and wellbeing effect whether or not people can be included in the labor force. However after further consideration this project proves to be too time consuming to complete over thirteen weeks. So the main adversity I’ve had to overcome this week is finding a research question that I have access to data for and can complete in a timely manner.
Luckily this week I came across a research paper, “A Behavioral Economic Model of Alcohol Advertising and Price”, that still has the same policy implications as the study I just previously mentioned. The authors Henry Saffer, Dhaval Dave and Michael Grossman present an empirical study on the behavioural effects of television advertising and price on alcohol consumption in the United States. I’ve decided to conduct similar research but in an Australian context. Similar data as to what was collected in the US I’ve found for Australian consumers. Alcohol consumption patterns is well recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. However the only issue with replicating the analysis done in this paper is that the researchers purchased advertising data from alcohol producers to use in the study. For obvious reasons I cannot do this for my own research so I’ve decided to use the cost of advertising for alcohol producers as a proxy for measuring the level of advertising alcohol consumers are exposed to.
Moving forward I will need to start conducting my analysis. This will involve running a regression that measures the effect of price, advertising and other factors such as socioeconomic status, on the consumption of alcohol. To do this Ill have to place my consumer data and data for my proxy into excel spreadsheets and conduct the regression analysis using Eviews.
Sean's COMM330 Blog 
Hi Sean,
I think this focus area is a very logical path to take considering the limitations you are faced, and still manages to fit the bill in finding an interesting research gap that has relevance in society! I know from personal experience that alcohol advertising has been a contentious point in recent times, but still seems to be advertised on television frequently, especially through sporting contests. I found a recent article from the Sydney Morning Herald that addresses this to an extent, but focuses on alcohol advertising during sporting events in “children’s viewing hours” and the effect this has on teenage drinking.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-link-between-alcohol-ads-and-risky-drinking-in-australian-teens-20190113-p50r45.html
This may not be quite relevant for your research, but it is interesting insight on an example of the negative effects of alcohol advertising on television.
As you addressed, getting advertising data would be nigh on impossible considering the restraints, so the proxy you are going to use seems to be sufficient. One other variable that could be used in your regression could be the time of day that alcohol advertising is used on television (morning v evening). You could use the measure as a dummy variable. The only thing is I am unsure how you would get data for it, but it might be an area to consider regardless.
Overall you seem to be ticking all the boxes, so keep it up!
Lucas.
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