distances to on- and off-premise alcohol outlets and experiences of alcohol-related amenity problems

Distances to on- and off-premise alcohol outlets and experiences ofalcohol-related amenity problemsdar_346 394..401

CLAIRE WILKINSON1,2 & MICHAEL LIVINGSTON1,2

1AER Centre for Alcohol Policy Research,Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, Eastern Health, and2School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

AbstractIntroduction and Aims. There are a number of studies in recent years that have examined the relationship of alcohol outletsto the incidence of alcohol-related problems. Only a small number of these studies examine the types of alcohol-related problemswhich may be considered amenity problems, such as neighbourhood disturbance, litter and noise. This paper examines theassociation between the proximity of someone’s home to alcohol outlets and their experience of public amenity problems. Designand Methods. Data came from an Australian general population survey: the Alcohol’s Harm to Others Survey (2008).Twothousand six hundred and forty-nine Australians aged 18 years and over were asked about their experiences of a number ofamenity-type problems and the distance they lived to the nearest on- and off-premise alcohol outlet. Results. Bivariate resultsshowed that respondents living closer to on- and off-premise outlets reported more problems, with minor differences by distanceto on- and off-premise outlet. In multivariate logistic regression analyses, controlling for possible confounding effects of therespondent and neighbourhood characteristics, living closer to on-premise outlets was independently associated with reportingbeing kept awake or disturbed at night and living closer to an off-premise outlet was independently associated with reportingproperty damage. Discussion and Conclusions. A possible interpretation of the results is that respondents living close toon- and off-premise outlets experience more amenity problems than those living further away, but that these experiences areconcentrated among demographic groups who live in these areas. Direction of influence cannot be inferred from thesecross-sectional findings. [Wilkinson C, Livingston M. Distances to on- and off-premise alcohol outlets and experiencesof alcohol-related amenity problems. Drug Alcohol Rev 2012;31:394–401]

Key words: alcohol drinking, amenity problem, alcohol outlet, proximity.

Introduction

A number of aggregate-level alcohol studies demon-strate a relationship between alcohol outlets and levelsof alcohol consumption [1,2] and alcohol-related prob-lems [3–6]. Predominately, alcohol-related problemsare measures of alcohol-related violence [7]; however, afew studies examine public amenity problems, such aspublic drunkenness, property damage and litter [8,9].

‘Amenity problems’ is a broad term, encompassing arange of problems, including fear, litter and negativeinteractions. Drinking, either for on-premise or for off-premise consumption, is likely to affect surroundingamenity in multiple and different ways. For example,patrons leaving bars and clubs can detract from the

amenity of the surrounding area. Drinking from off-premise outlets may be done in public and contributeto litter and public perceptions of fear. Trouble in thestreet may result from off-premise as well as on-premisedrinking. Police data provide evidence of a link betweenalcohol outlets and amenity problems, such as drunkand disorderly behaviour, vandalism of propertydamage and offensive behaviour (i.e. [10]). However,many alcohol-related amenity problems are notrecorded by police—such as litter and fear and safetyconcerns.

Only a few aggregate-level studies have found a posi-tive relationship between alcohol outlets and amenityproblems. From a US population survey,Wechsler et al.[9] found the number of alcohol outlets within 1 mile of

Claire Wilkinson BASc (Hons), Research Fellow and PhD Candidate, Michael Livingston BAppSc, BA (Hons), Research Fellow and PhDCandidate. Correspondence to Ms Claire Wilkinson, AER Centre for Alcohol Policy Research,Turning Point, Alcohol and Drug Centre, EasternHealth, 54-62 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Vic. 3065, Australia. Tel: +61 (03) 8413 8418; Fax: +61 (03) 9416 3420; E-mail: [email protected]

Received 20 January 2011; accepted for publication 11 July 2011.

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R E V I E W

Drug and Alcohol Review (June 2012), 31, 394–401DOI: 10.1111/j.1465-3362.2011.00346.x

© 2011 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs

the respondent’s home mediated the relationshipbetween living in a college neighbourhood, especiallycolleges with high rates of binge drinking, and reportingamenity-type problems, such as litter, noise, vandalismand vomit. The study controlled for neighbourhoodincome, racial composition, the degree of home own-ership and age distribution. The findings suggest thatproximity to alcohol outlets is related to experiencingamenity problems when the level of alcohol consump-tion, in this case a measure of binge drinking at neigh-bourhood colleges, is taken into account.

In a study conducted in New South Wales, Australia,Donnelly and colleagues [8] examined the relationshipof two types of self-reported amenity problems mea-sured in a national survey—problems from drunken-ness in the neighbourhood and vandalism/graffiti/damage to property—to alcohol outlets, using licensedata. The authors used both a measure of neighbour-hood outlet density (per capita) as well as a devisedmeasure of outlet accessibility: the average distancefrom the spatial centre of the respondent’s neighbour-hood to the five closest licensed premises. Both alcoholoutlet measures were related to reporting the amenityproblems in the neighbourhood, after controlling for arange of potential confounding factors.

A study by Kypri et al. [11] examined the effect ofalcohol outlet density with drinking levels and relatedproblems among a sample of university students inNew Zealand. Amenity-type problems, such as experi-encing property damage, finding vomit in the halls or inbathrooms and having studying or sleep interruptions,were included in an index of second-hand effects [12].The 1 km liquor outlet density effect was greater thanthe 3 km density measure. The outlet density effectsremained significant, after adjusting for importantcovariates and were analysed using the generalised esti-mating equation negative binomial method.

These three studies provide cross-sectional evidencethat alcohol outlets are related to amenity-type prob-lems in the surrounding neighbourhood. Donnelly et al.[8] attempted to ascertain differential effects of differ-ent licence types with respect to outlet density, butfound high correlations between these measures left nosingle licence type remaining consistently predictive ina combined model.The study by Kypri et al. [11] founda slightly greater effect for off-premise outlet densities.Wechsler et al. [9] did not examine the effect of differ-ent types of licences on amenity problems. Studies fromthe alcohol outlet density literature have consistentlyfound different effects on alcohol-related problems fordifferent categories of licences (e.g. [7,13]), althoughthese differences vary substantially across studiesdepending on the type of harm being considered andthe location of the study. Distinguishing betweenlicence types is important for licensing policy. How

licences influence the amenity of their surrounding areais often a key consideration in liquor licensing policiesand condition of licences for licensees, see for a USexample Mack [14], and for an Australian exampleDonnelly et al. [8], so evidence distinguishing betweenlicense types may help reduce problems by targetinginterventions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate amenityeffects from on- and off-premise drinking outlets. Thetwo research questions examined are: (i) Do Austra-lians who live closer to licensed premises report moreamenity problems relating to these venues? and (ii) Isthere a difference between the relationship betweendistance to different kinds of licensed premises andreporting alcohol-related problems?

Methods

Data

The Range and Magnitude of Alcohol’s Harm toOthers Survey was designed to measure the ways inwhich alcohol causes harm and problems to peopleother than the drinker [15].

A random sample of Australian adults aged 18 yearsor older was selected in a two-phase sampling frame.Households were selected using random digit dialling.Where there was more than one eligible person in ahousehold a participant was identified randomly usingthe next birthday method. Surveys were conductedusing computer-assisted telephone interviews with anaverage interview length of 18 min.The interviews wereconducted between November and early December2008. Ethics approval for the survey was granted by theHuman Research Ethics Committee of the VictorianDepartment of Human Services.

Surveys were completed with 2649 people. Theresponse rate was 35.2% and the cooperation rate was49.7% based on the standards proposed by the Ameri-can Association of Public Opinion Research [16]. Theresponse rate is consistent with other large computer-assisted telephone interview surveys on sensitive healthmatters in Australia [17]. Survey weights were devel-oped for estimating national prevalence rates [18], butare not used in this study, which focuses only on rela-tionships between variables.

Measures

Amenity problems. The amenity problem items weredrawn from a section of the survey, which was designedto measure the respondent’s experiences of a range ofalcohol-related problems, both to themselves and totheir property in the last 12 months, committed bysomeone not known to them. Participants were asked

Outlet proximity and amenity problems 395


‘We would now like to ask you about strangers orpeople you do not know very well. Because of theirdrinking, in the last 12 months, how many times haveyou . . .’: been kept awake at night or disturbed?; feltunsafe in any other public place (other than ‘publictransport’, the subject of the previous item in thesurvey); avoided drunk people or places where drinkersare known to hang out; been annoyed by people vom-iting, urinating or littering when they have been drink-ing; and have your house, car or property damaged. Inthis study these items are referred to as kept awake ordisturbed, unsafe in public place, avoided drunkpeople, annoyed by vomiting and property damage.

A consideration with the amenity data is that themeasures do not assess the problems occurring in therespondent’s direct neighbourhood—the problemscould have occurred outside the respondent’s neigh-bourhood.

Measures of proximity to licensed venues. Respondentswere asked to estimate the distance from their home tothe nearest bar, club or pub (on-premise) and bottleshop (off-premise).

In some jurisdictions of Australia, on- and off-premise outlets are not mutually exclusive (at hotelswhere alcohol can be purchased in attached bottleshops for off-premise consumption for example); thus,the measure does not distinguish between these twoways alcohol may be purchased and consumed from theone venue. In general in Australia alcohol cannot besold at convenience stores, it is becoming increasinglysold at supermarkets, including on the shelf rather thanin a separate defined alcohol area. It is unknownwhether respondents would consider purchase at super-markets to be a bottle shop.

Demographic and drinking variables. Socio-demographics included in the multivariate analyseswere gender, age group (seven categories from 18–24up to 75 or older), highest level of education completed(four categories: did not complete high school, com-pleted high school but no other education, completedvocational education and completed tertiary educa-tion), drinking pattern (four groups: non-drinkers,drink alcohol but never five or more drinks in a session,drink five or more drinks in a session less often thanonce a week and drink five or more drinks at least oncea week), residential socio-economic disadvantage(ranked quintiles of relative disadvantage) [19] andrelative remoteness of their residency (two categories:major cities or inner regional, outer regional, remoteand very remote (categories collapsed from AustralianStandard Geographical Classification that divides Aus-tralia into six broad regions based on physical roaddistance to the nearest urban centre [20]). A range of

socio-demographic factors have been found to beimportant predictors of police-reported assaults [21].

Analysis

Statistical analysis was conducted using stata 11.0 [22]for Windows. Each amenity problem item was madeinto dichotomous variables (experienced vs. not expe-rienced problem). The measure of distance to nearestbar, club and pub and distance to nearest bottle shopwere made into categorical variables, based on mean-ingful distances (e.g. 1 km rather than 1.3 km). Bivari-ate analysis of each problem item was conducted usingcontingency tables with c2 and test for trend across thedistance categories.

Multivariate logistic regression models were used tomodel the relationship between experience of each ofthe five amenity problems and the distance respondentslived from the two types of licences. These modelscontrol for the possible mediating effects of the respon-dent’s demographics and drinking patterns and neigh-bourhood level characteristics on amenity problems.Odds ratios, 95% confidence intervals and P-values arepresented.The measures of distance to nearest licensedvenues were included as continuous variables measuredin kilometres. The distance measures were correlatedwith each other, but were not strongly collinear(r = 0.234).

Results

Descriptive statistics for the measures used in the studyare presented in Table 1. Table 2 presents the unad-justed relationships between covariates and categoricalamenity outcomes. In general socio-demographic anddrinking factors are related to amenity problems.Common to most amenity problems were age, level ofeducation and drinking pattern (Table 2).

Tables 3 and 4 present the proportion of respondentsreporting each of the amenity problems by the distancethey live to licensed venues. The c2-test indicates thatthe proportion of persons experiencing amenity prob-lems differ by distance from the nearest licensedpremise. The test for trend indicated a significantdecrease in proportion of persons experiencing amenityproblems with greater distance from both types oflicensed premises.

We next examined the relationship of distance tonearest licensed premise and reporting amenity prob-lems in multivariate models (Table 5). We assessed theconfounding effects of demographic variables and thepotential mediating or confounding effects of drinkingvariables. Drinking variables could be either a cause ora consequence of the distance one lives to the nearestalcohol outlet (in that people may choose to live closer

396 C.Wilkinson & M. Livingston


to alcohol outlets and their drinking may changebecause of the distance they live to outlets). Tests forcollinearity between the model predictors demon-strated no substantial concerns, with all variance infla-tion factors less than 1.2. All regressions included themeasures of distance to both types of outlets (as con-

tinuous variables) to account for possible confounding.There was little effect on the predictive power of themeasures of distance to licensed premises on reportingamenity problems by adding confounders/mediators tothe multivariate models. The distance to the nearestlicensed venue (of either type) had little relationshipwith experiences of problems. Adjusting for covariates,only two relationships were statistically significant: keptawake at night or disturbed by distance to nearest bar,club or pub and experiencing property damage by thedistance one lives to the nearest bottle shop. Interpret-ing the odds ratios respondents were 4% less likely to bekept awake at night or disturbed with each kilometrefurther away from the nearest bar, club or pub theylived and 7% less likely to report experiencing propertydamage with each further kilometre from a bottle shop.

Demographic and socio-economic factors were ingeneral not important to the multivariate models. Theexception was the respondent’s age; the odds of report-ing all problems decrease with age. For example,respondents aged 75 years and older were 80% lesslikely to report this problem than those aged18–25 years.

Discussion

This study examined the relationship between alcoholavailability (measured as self-reported distance to thenearest on- and off-premise licensed venues) and expe-riencing amenity problems (responses to five surveyitems). The results show the nearer one lives to bothtypes of licensed premises the more likely one is toreport experiencing these problems. Respondents wholive closer to bars, clubs or pubs were more likely toreport being kept awake or disturbed at night becauseof drunken noises, feeling unsafe in public places, andbeing annoyed by vomit, urination or litter. After con-trolling for a range of socio-demographic factors onlyreporting being kept awake at night or disturbed wasrelated to distance to nearest bar, club or pub. Respon-dents who live closer to bottle shops were more likely toreport being kept awake or disturbed at night, annoyedby vomit, feeling unsafe in a public place and experi-encing property damage. After controlling for socio-demographic factors only reporting property damagewas related to distance to nearest bottle shop.

Livingston et al. [3] proposed an ‘amenity effect’ inwhich alcohol outlets are related to amenity problemsas ‘attractors of trouble’.While the multivariate modelsin this study were not strong they did suggest a weakdifferential relationship between licence type and dif-ferent amenity problems; this may add detail to such anamenity effect. Finding that on-premise outlets aremore strongly related to being kept awake at night or

Table 1. Sample characteristics (unweighted data), N = 2649,Alcohol’s Harm to Others Survey 2008

Variable n %

GenderFemale 1560 58.9Male 1089 41.1

Age18–24 years 222 8.425–34 years 388 14.735–44 years 551 20.845–54 years 567 21.455–64 years 475 17.965–74 years 287 10.875+ years 159 6.0

Education level (35 missing)Did not complete high school 612 23.4Completed high school 552 21.1Trade certificate, apprenticeship, etc 490 18.8Bachelor degree or higher 960 36.7

Relative remoteness of location (20 missing)Major cities 1458 55.5Regional and remote 1171 44.5

Neighbourhood socio-economic disadvantage(15 missing)1 most disadvantaged 374 14.22 454 17.23 523 19.94 586 22.35 least disadvantaged 697 26.5

Drinking pattern5+ at least weekly 301 11.45+ less than weekly 967 36.5Drinker but never drinks 5+ 976 36.8Non-drinker or ex-drinker 405 15.3

Nearest bar, club or pub (203 missing)<0.5 km 246 10.10.5– < 1 km 298 12.21– < 2 km 551 22.52– < 5 km 788 32.25 km+ 563 23.0

Nearest bottle shop (169 missing)<0.5 km 295 11.90.5– < 1 km 434 17.51– < 2 km 638 25.72– < 5 km 675 27.25 km+ 438 17.7

Amenity problemsKept awake or disturbed (10 missing) 1007 38.2Unsafe in public place (16 missing) 622 23.6Avoided drunk people (83 missing) 1071 41.7Annoyed by vomiting (13 missing) 698 26.5Property damage (32 missing) 235 9.0



disturbed makes sense because of live or loud music(and the finding is in line with Wechsler et al. [9]).Thatproperty damage is related to the distance to bottleshops rather than on-premise outlets is harder to inter-pret. It may be best to look to other literature, such aspublic drinking literature [23,24], or how crime, suchas robbery, is linked to characteristics of alcohol outletsand neighbourhoods (see e.g. [14]), which may meanbottle shops are attractors of trouble rather thanon-premise outlets. This finding supports the findings

of Stevenson [10] who found a relationship betweentotal alcohol sales through off-premise licences andmalicious damage offences reported to police. If, asStevenson [10] infers, this relationship is due to publicdrinking (particularly youth public drinking) then twoissues are raised: how to regulate both public drinkingand sales to minors at take away premises. Victorianplanning laws have recently been amended to requireapplications for new bottle shops to receive a planningpermit. This amendment provides a potential policy

Table 2. Unadjusted relationships between covariates and amenity problems (unweighted data), Alcohol’s Harm to Others Survey 2008

Variable

Amenity problem

Kept awakeor disturbed

Unsafe inpublic place

Avoided drunkpeople

Annoyed byvomiting

Propertydamage

Gender ** * NS NS NSAge *** *** *** *** ***Education level *** *** *** *** NSRelative remoteness of location NS ** NS NS NSNeighbourhood socio-economic disadvantage NS NS * NS NSDrinking pattern *** *** ** NS ***

Statistical significance: *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001. NS, not significant.

Table 3. Distance to nearest bar, club or pub and amenity problems (unweighted data), Alcohol’s Harm to OthersSurvey 2008

Nearest bar, club or pub c2(4) c2(1)

<0.5 km 0.5– < 1 km 1– < 2 km 2– < 5 km 5 km+ P-valuea P-valueb

Kept awake or disturbed 49.6 49.3 41.3 37.4 31.7 <0.001 <0.001Unsafe in public place 27.9 30.7 24.9 22.4 20.5 0.006 0.001Avoided drunk people 46.8 49.3 40.2 41.1 41.4 0.054 0.035Annoyed by vomiting 35.4 33 27.1 23.5 25.5 0.001 <0.001Property damage 12.3 11.6 10.5 7.8 8.1 0.081 0.008

aChi-squared statistic, 4 degrees of freedom. bQ-test z statistic for trend across ordered groups.

Table 4. Distance to nearest bottle shop and amenity problems (unweighted data), Alcohol’s Harm to Others Survey 2008

Nearest bottle shop c2(4) c2(1)

<0.5 km 0.5– < 1 km 1– < 2 km 2– < 5 km 5 km+ P-valuea P-valueb

Kept awake or disturbed 46.3 46.7 41.1 38 28 <0.001 <0.001Unsafe in public place 29.7 27.4 24.6 23.8 18.8 0.007 <0.001Avoided drunk people 47.7 45.5 39.8 43.3 39.9 0.098 0.047Annoyed by vomiting 33.1 30.3 25.8 26.4 24.3 0.042 0.004Property damage 13.4 10.6 9.5 9.6 4.6 0.001 <0.001

aChi-squared statistic, 4 degrees of freedom. bQ-test z statistic for trend across ordered groups.



Tab

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Mul

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logi

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gP

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95%

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95%

CI

P-v

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95%

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OR

95%

CI

P-v

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OR

95%

CI

P-v

alue

Nea

rest

bar,

club

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b(k

m)

0.96

(0.9

4,0.

98)

<0.0

010.

98(0

.97,

1.00

)0.

101

1.00

(0.9

9,1.

01)

0.74

10.

99(0

.97,

1.01

)0.

465

0.99

(0.9

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03)

0.60

9N

eare

stbo

ttle

shop

(km

)1.

00(0

.99,

1.00

)0.

403

0.99

(0.9

8,1.

01)

0.30

51.

00(0

.99,

1.00

)0.

228

0.99

(0.9

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0.17

80.

93(0

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0.99

)0.

030

Mal

e(v

s.fe

mal

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80(0

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0.96

)0.

014

0.78

(0.6

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96)

0.02

21.

10(0

.91,

1.32

)0.

317

0.94

(0.7

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15)

0.52

60.

99(0

.73,

1.34

)0.

933

25–3

4ye

arol

ds(v

s.18

–24

year

olds

)1.

09(0

.75,

1.56

)0.

656

0.59

(0.4

1,0.

86)

0.00

60.

87(0

.60,

1.25

)0.

445

0.46

(0.3

2,0.

67)

<0.0

010.

44(0

.27,

0.72

)0.

001

35–4

4ye

arol

ds(v

s.18

–24

year

olds

)1.

16(0

.82,

1.63

)0.

404

0.48

(0.3

3,0.

68)

<0.0

010.

56(0

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0.79

)0.

001

0.37

(0.2

6,0.

53)

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010.

39(0

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0.62

)<0

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45–5

4ye

arol

ds(v

s.18

–24

year

olds

)0.

89(0

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1.26

)0.

513

0.34

(0.2

4,0.

49)

<0.0

010.

64(0

.45,

0.90

)0.

010

0.38

(0.2

7,0.

54)

<0.0

010.

33(0

.20,

0.52

)<0

.001

55–6

4ye

arol

ds(v

s.18

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year

olds

)0.

60(0

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0.86

)0.

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0.23

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35)

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46(0

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0.66

)<0

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0.24

(0.1

7,0.

35)

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27(0

.16,

0.46

)<0

.001

65–7

4ye

arol

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s.18

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)0.

31(0

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0.47

)<0

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0.09

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17)

<0.0

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22(0

.15,

0.34

)<0

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0.08

(0.0

4,0.

13)

<0.0

010.

12(0

.05,

0.27

)<0

.001

75+

year

olds

(vs.

18–2

4ye

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0.21

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1,0.

37)

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0.21

)<0

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0.12

(0.0

7,0.

23)

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05(0

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0.12

)<0

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0.03

(0.0

0,0.

23)

0.00

1

Hig

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not

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0.98

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28)

0.89

81.

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1.57

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0.97

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0.83

41.

31(0

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088

0.91

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0.69

7

Voc

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1.54

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0.01

01.

21(0

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1.59

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179

1.34

(0.9

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0.06

91.

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1.63

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971

Uni

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1.26

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1.77

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36)

<0.0

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43(1

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1.82

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004

1.72

(1.3

1,2.

27)

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25(0

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1.90

)0.

281

2(v

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disa

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d)1.

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1.39

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890

1.29

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0.17

70.

91(0

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1.25

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565

0.99

(0.7

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0.95

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20(0

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1.29

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1.25

(0.8

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79)

0.21

80.

84(0

.62,

1.13

)0.

245

0.84

(0.6

0,1.

18)

0.31

51.

16(0

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1.99

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586

4(v

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83(0

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1.11

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1.15

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0.43

11.

20(0

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1.61

)0.

241

0.95

(0.6

8,1.

33)

0.77

71.

25(0

.74,

2.11

)0.

414

leas

tdi

sadv

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ged

(vs.

mos

tdi

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1.00

(0.7

4,1.

35)

0.99

00.

97(0

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1.38

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873

0.89

(0.6

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0.46

31.

01(0

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1.41

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947

1.31

(0.7

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316

Reg

iona

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(vs.

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)1.

01(0

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906

0.81

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01)

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lever to reduce the impacts of bottle shops on localamenity. However, there is limited evidence suggestingpublic drinking laws reduce property damage [10].Thelevel of noise coming from an on-premise license isrecognised by liquor licensing systems where limits onthe permissible noise levels are often specified. Regula-tion can help balance the rights of performing artistsand patrons to enjoy music with those of local residents.However, maintaining a balance between these some-times differing interests becomes less simple withincreased high density living around licensedpremises—such as central business districts increas-ingly becoming a place where people live as well aswork. Noise may also be linked to on-premise outletsfrom patrons after they leave a venue, although this isharder to control. Contextual factors, such as goodpublic transport to quickly move patrons on afterleaving a premise, and the design of both the licensedpremises—particularly its exterior as well as urbanareas around the licensed venue, may help reduce this.

These differences between the relationship betweendistance to different kinds of licensed premises andreporting alcohol-related problems were found with ameasure of proximity, and not one incorporatingdensity of licensed premises, suggesting that the closerone lives to a single licensed venue the greater thelikelihood of experiencing these alcohol-relatedamenity problems, irrespective of whether there aremany or few other licensed venues in the area.However, while using self-report survey question ofproximity to the nearest licensed outlet is easy toadminister in a large population survey, respondentsresponses cannot be validated. Where possible, futurework could use data based on actual measurementrather than self-reported data.

The study had some limitations in exploring theresearch question.The amenity problems, by the surveywording, were not necessarily limited to those occur-ring in the respondent’s neighbourhood. One’s experi-ence of these problems could be related to how oftenrespondents were in public and in particularly in enter-tainment areas. For example, Teece and Williams [25]found those away from home on weekend nights hadalmost double the risk of reporting being victimised bysomeone affected by alcohol, and persons who usuallydrink in public places were much more likely to bevictims of alcohol-related harm than others. Anotherlimitation is that the amenity problem questions,although similar to items used in a number of studies[9,12], have not been examined in terms of validity orreliability. There is also the limitation that the outletsurvey items were broad, referring to specific licensingcategories may need to be used to decipher whetherspecific licence types are more or less likely to be relatedto amenity problems. In this study, distance from the

nearest licensed venue was based on the respondent’sestimation, rather than on a physical measure. Previouswork on parks and green space has found issues withthe accuracy of self-reported distance measures [26],suggesting that our measure may not accurately reflectthe distance to the nearest licensed premise. However,self-report distance measures to alcohol outlets havebeen found to be consistent when independentlyreported by multiple respondents, which provides somesupport for this measure [9]. It may be that relation-ships between proximity and amenity problems aredetectable with more accurate measures of distance(such as geocoded licence data as in [8]), where adensity measure (rather than distance to a singlepremise) is used, and where alcohol consumption isincluded. Beyond the division between on- and off-premise, this study treated each licence as equally likelyto contribute to amenity problems, this is unlikely to bethe case [27]. As mentioned this does not take intoaccount density, and threshold effects or differencesbetween licences, premise-specific drivers of alcohol-related harm or the impact of third variables, such asurban layout, density, number of homeless, unem-ployed, other business of the neighbourhood, etc.Future opportunities to differentiate between charac-teristics of licensed premises and problems should bepursued to help target interventions. More discerningdata on license type is also likely to have the practicalimplication of being more applicable to decisions madein licensing processes.

Amenity problems have been rarely examined inaggregate-level alcohol availability research (comparedwith alcohol-related violence). This study presentssome initial findings of a relationship between alcoholavailability and amenity problems. The implications ofthe work for policy are for liquor licensing processesto include considerations of amenity effects on thelocal area. Recent changes in the state of Victoria’slicensing legislation layout specific characteristics of alocal area that should be considered when granting anew licence or changes to an existing licence. Suchgreater focus on amenity and local area character maybe indicative of greater inclusion of consideration ofamenity issues in licensing policies [28]; however,there remains the challenge of applying aggregate-level research in licensing application processes wherethe particular circumstances of the local area areconsidered.

Acknowledgements

The Alcohol’s Harm to Others Study was commis-sioned by the Alcohol Education and RehabilitationFoundation Ltd.



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