Boyd, J. orcid.org/0000-0001-8780-3196, Holmes, J. orcid.org/0000-0001-9283-2151, Gibbs, N. et al. (3 more authors) (2024) How can agent‐based modelling provide new insights into the impact of minimum unit pricing in Scotland? Drug and Alcohol Review, 43 (7). pp. 1657-1661. ISSN 0959-5236
Abstract
In recent years we have gained insight into the impact of minimum unit pricing (MUP)—a legal floor price below which a given volume of alcohol cannot be sold—on population-level reductions in alcohol sales, consumption and harm. However, several questions remain unanswered including how individual-level purchasing changes impact the local economy (e.g., balance between on-licence and off-licence outlets), lead to long-term population-level trends (e.g., youth drinking) and social harms (e.g., violence). Agent-based modelling captures heterogeneity, emergence, feedback loops and adaptive and dynamic features, which provides an opportunity to understand the nuanced effects of MUP. Agent-based models (ABM) simulate heterogeneous agents (e.g., individuals, organisations) often situated in space and time that interact with other agents and/or with their environment, allowing us to identify the mechanisms underlying social phenomena. ABMs are particularly useful for theory development, and testing and simulating the impacts of policies and interventions. We illustrate how ABMs could be applied to generate novel insights and provide best estimates of social network effects, and changes in purchasing behaviour and social harms, due to the implementation of MUP. ABMs like other modelling approaches can simulate alternative implementations of MUP (e.g., policy intensity [£0.50, £0.60] or spatial scales [local, national]) but can also provide an understanding of the potential impact of MUP on different population groups (e.g., alcohol exposure of young people who are not yet drinking). Using ABMs to understand the impact of MUP would provide new insights to complement those from traditional epidemiological and other modelling methods.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Drug and Alcohol Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | agent‐based modelling; alcohol consumption; alcohol harm; minimum unit pricing |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering (Sheffield) The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Medicine and Population Health |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 14 Jun 2024 11:30 |
Last Modified: | 20 Nov 2024 15:27 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/dar.13880 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:213325 |