Initial Development of a Brief Behavioral Economic Assessment of Alcohol Demand

Abstract

Due to difficulties with definition and measurement, the role of conscious craving in substance use disorders remains contentious. To address this, behavioral economics is increasingly being used to quantify aspects of an individual's acute motivation to use a substance. Doing so typically involves the use of a purchase task, in which participants make choices about consuming alcohol or other substances at various prices and multiple indices of alcohol demand are generated. However, purchase tasks can be limited by the time required to administer and score them. In the current study, a brief 3-item measure, designed to capture three important indices of demand that are derived from demand curve modeling (intensity, O_max, and breakpoint), was investigated in a group of 84 heavy drinkers. Participants underwent a cue-reactivity paradigm that is established to increase both conscious craving and alcohol demand on traditional purchase tasks. All three indices of demand for alcohol measured using the abbreviated measure increased significantly in response to alcohol cues, analogous to what has been observed using a traditional purchase task. Additionally, the correlations between these indices and subjective craving were modest-to-moderate, as has been found in studies comparing craving to the indices derived from purchase tasks. These findings suggest that this abbreviated measure may be a useful and efficient way to capture important and distinct aspects of motivation for alcohol. If these results are confirmed, this measure may be able to help increase the portability of behavioral economic indices of demand into novel research and clinical contexts.

Keywords: Alcohol; Behavioral Economics; Craving; Demand; Purchase Task.