The Role of Bandwagon and Snob Effects in Student Demand for Binge Drinking in College

Although binge drinking among college students in the United states remains a considerable concern to government and public health officials, the issue has received much less attention in economic literature. This paper therefore uses tools introduced by statistical mechanics to develop a theoretical model for, and empirically illustrate, the study of the interaction processes in college students’ demand for binge drinking. With the focus on bandwagon and snob effects, this paper shows that statistical mechanics methods can provide a simple but yet unifying framework for understanding the importance of collective interdependence among economic actors in the emergence of complex aggregate behavior such as college binge drinking. The results also show that the bandwagon effect and the snob effect can be used through targeted policy planning to effectively reduce the economic and health burden of college binge drinking in the US