Alcohol consumption under extreme uncertainty: cultural moderation in trilingual Switzerland

Periods of extreme uncertainty reshape household consumption, yet whether these adjustments are culturally homogeneous within a common institutional setting remains unclear. We examine alcohol consumption, a discretionary good closely linked to mood regulation and sociability, during Switzerland’s Spring 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. Using survey data from 747 respondents, we test whether changes in the consumption and expenditure of wine, beer, and spirits differed across linguistic communities, and whether cultural affiliation moderates the determinants of changes in wine consumption, through a heteroscedastic ordered Probit model with culture-specific interactions and variance structures. Responses were far from uniform: differences in consumption volume were modest but substantially stronger in spending, indicating culturally distinct adjustments in quality choices. More importantly, the determinants of changes in wine consumption vary significantly across linguistic groups. Joint tests support cross-community residual-scale differences for consumption volume but not for expenditure per bottle, for which the scale evidence is mixed. Because policies, prices, and the currency are held constant, these differences are consistent with cultural affiliation moderating consumption responses to major shocks rather than with institutional or price variation, with implications for behavioural research, health policy, and industry strategy.