Effect of a disincentive manipulation on drinking behavior in simulated and virtual reality drinking environments

Recent work has established the validity of assessing drinking topography using a virtual reality (VR) bar environment compared to a more traditional simulated bar environment. Here, we test the sensitivity of the VR paradigm in detecting the impact of a previously validated experimental manipulation on drinking topography compared with an identical simulated bar environment.

We assessed the drinking topography (DT) of participants (N = 21) exceeding moderate drinking guidelines across four counterbalanced testing sessions: two used the simulated bar and two used the virtual bar. In this secondary analysis, we compared participant responses to an experimental manipulation that provided disincentives for excessive drinking in both bar environments.

Participants reported increased sip interval during their disincentive manipulation sessions (t = 3.024, p = .003, β=27.323), such that participants drank more slowly (~27 additional seconds per sip). However, as expected, the bar environment did not significantly moderate this effect (t = -1.353, p = .176, β=-8.110). Results also found a significant main effect of manipulation on sip volume: participants reported decreased sip volume during their disincentive manipulation sessions (t = -3.055, p = .002, β=-4.051), such that participants had smaller sips (~4 fewer grams per sip). Again, no significant interactive effects (t = .538, p = .591, β=.473) were found.

This study found the effect of a disincentive-based experimental manipulation on drinking topography does not differ significantly between a simulated physical bar and a VR bar. Combined with evidence that drinking topography measures are highly consistent between environments, results suggest that VR bar environments are well-suited to study biospsychosocial influences on self-paced drinking behavior.