Akers's Social Learning Theory of Deviance was tested in the context of an enforcement-based public health campaign aimed at decreasing access to alcohol. In sociology and criminology journals, the theoretical implications of using increased enforcement as a deterrent for dangerous drinking are being investigated in the lab and with secondary data analysis, though not in the context of a purposeful enforcement campaign. In communication journals, alcohol campaigns are frequently assessed, but enforcement interventions have been evaluated exclusively atheoretically. As a result, there is no work investigating both the internal and external validity of using any deterrence-based theory as the basis of an alcohol intervention. The current study begins to fill this gap in the literature by testing a criminology theory with cross-sectional data collected during an enforcement-based alcohol campaign.

347 randomly selected students from a large southern California university participated in study. Several hypotheses derived from the criminological theory were tested and confirmed, providing support for using the Social Learning Theory of Deviance as the explanation for how criminal deterrence functions as an alcohol use behavior change tactic. As predicted by the theory, the impact of ethnicity on alcohol use was completely mediated by differential association and differential reinforcement. Both alcohol-related reinforcements and punishments were associated with higher levels of alcohol use, but in support for the theory, higher net positive reinforcements to costs for alcohol use predicted more general use, more underage use, and more frequent binge drinking. An unexpected finding was the negative relationship between negative expectations and negative experiences.

Further context and evidence is provided by delving into the particular campaigns currently running at the test site, and the implications for future campaigns based on Akers's deterrence theory are discussed.