The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Alcohol-free ‘nudges’ work
Making alcoholfree beer more widely available on draught nudges people towards healthier choices, research suggests.
A new study led by Bristol University found that making the drinks more visible and easier to purchase in bars led to increases in sales of non-alcoholic beer.
Alcohol can lead to weight gain and addiction, and has been linked to seven types of cancer, including mouth, upper throat, larynx, oesophagus, breast and bowel cancer.
Offering alcohol-free options is often seen as a good alternative for people who want to be healthier.
For the new study, researchers from the university’s tobacco and alcohol research group, working with Bristol City
Council, recruited 14 pubs and bars in Bristol.
None of the venues had previously offered alcohol-free beer on draught.
For the study, the pubs and bars completed two intervention periods and two “control” periods in a randomised order over eight weeks.
The intervention involved replacing one draught alcoholic beer with an alcohol-free beer. The control period of the study was business as usual.
The study found that, when an alcohol-free option was available, pubs and bars sold, on average, 29 fewer litres of alcoholic beer per week, equivalent to 51 fewer pints and a 5% reduction in sales.
However, this was replaced by an equivalent increase in sales of alcohol-free beer, suggesting customers were choosing the healthier option. Furthermore, there was no impact on the money taken, suggesting the change did not leave pubs and bars worse off.
The team, writing in the journal Addiction, concluded: “Introducing a draught alcohol-free beer in bars and pubs in England reduced the volume of draught alcoholic beer sold by 4% to 5%, with no evidence of the intervention impacting net revenue.”
Professor of behavioural science, Ivo Vlaev, from Warwick Business School, said the “study underscores the power of nudges in shaping healthier societal choices”.
He added: “By simply making alcohol-free beer more visible and accessible, the research leverages basic human biases towards easier, more prominent options.”