Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the existence and impact of peer effect and individual risk attitude on smoking, drinking and dieting behavior among Japanese college students and adolescent.
Method: The primary contribution of this study is in its measurement variable, which allows for a critically different strategy for identifying peer effects. Although many peer effect indices have been put forward in previous researches, there have been few studies that analyzed the nature of these indices. Methods for empirical research must be studied carefully because effects vary according to the nature of the social interaction factor index.Second, we also considered the effect of individual risk preference as a factor separate from social interaction effect. Risk preference is an individual-specific attitude toward risk, which is intimately linked to risky behaviors. There are few studies to investigate the relation between peer effect and risk preference explicitly.The behaviors measured in our survey represent some of the most significant and well-known behavioral influences on health status; smoking, drinking, and excessive diet.Besides information on risky behaviors, risk preference and background characteristics for all individuals between 15-22 years old in Japanese adolescent and college students, the data reveals which school, class and reference group each individual participates in. Binary choice logit model was used to estimate.
Result: In all specification, significant peer effects and risk preference were found for drinking and smoking. The impact of peer behavior is larger among females and young people.
Conclusion: This study demonstrated the existence of peer effect on risky behaviors among young people in Japan. For health policy, the potential existence and magnitude of peer effect is of interest, since peer effects may dominate the effects of policy interventions.
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