Repayment Expectation is Associated With Korean Middle School Male-identified Adolescents’ Drinking Indirectly via Parental Psychological Control, Whereas Indebtedness is not

We examined whether the cultural values of indebtedness and repayment expectation as two facets of reciprocity were indirectly associated with adolescents' drinking via parental psychological control (PPC) in Korean culture. Korean adolescents (<i>N</i> = 354, 13-16 years old, and 207 female-identified) attending a middle school in Seoul participated in an innovative online survey using a slider (0-100). Measures included the Indebtedness and Repayment Expectation Scale developed for this study, an established scale of PPC, and drinking frequency in the past year. Latent variable Structural Equation Models revealed that repayment expectation-expecting others to repay favors-was significantly positively associated with PPC among male-identified adolescents. PPC was in turn significantly positively associated with drinking frequency. Female-identified adolescents felt more controlled by their primary caregivers than did male-identified adolescents, whereas multiple group analyses showed that the strength of the association between reciprocity facets and PPC was larger for male-identified adolescents than female-identified adolescents. These results suggest that both repayment expectation and PPC may be risk factors for Korean middle school adolescents' drinking. Our results highlight potential cultural and familial risk factors for Korean adolescents' drinking and may guide prevention efforts focusing on reducing repayment expectation and PPC in order to reduce adolescents' drinking.