Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/309936 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] Empirical Economics [ISSN:] 1435-8921 [Volume:] 63 [Issue:] 5 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] 2785-2815
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Locus of control (LOC) measures how much an individual believes in the causal relationship between her own actions and her life's outcomes. While earlier literature has shown that an increasing internal LOC is associated with increased health-conscious behavior in domains such as smoking, exercise or diets, we find that drinking seems to be different. Using very informative German panel data, we extend and generalize previous findings and find a significant positive association between having an internal LOC and the probability of occasional and regular drinking for men and women. An increase in an individual's LOC by one standard deviation increases the probability of occasional or regular drinking on average by 3.4% for men and 6.9% for women. Using a decomposition method, we show that roughly a quarter of this association can be explained by differences in the social activities between internal and external individuals.
Subjects: 
Locus of control
Alcohol consumption
Health behavior
Risk perception
social activity
JEL: 
I12
D91
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.