The Research Outcome: Summary and Conclusions on the Reduction in Wine Consumption in Italy

Abstract

This article summarizes the way we tried to understand why Italians, since the early 1970s, have reduced their wine consumption in the absence of drinking-control policies. The curve trend could be plausibly explained, in its upward phase, mainly by income and price mechanisms, while in the downward phase it reflected multiple factors. Although some of these factors (urbanization, work in factories, and the services sector) were intensely developing in the growth phase of alcohol consumption, they produced evident effects on the wine consumption decrease as well. In addition, overall consumption patterns of the 1970s were affected, in conjunction with the consolidation of a new lifestyle imposed by the change. Thus, these factors determined the first phase of the trend's reversal. Other factors (social mobility, redefinition of ways to use leisure time, changes in the family structure and in the role of women, de-structuring of meals, personal care, health consciousness), emerged and consolidated on a mass level during the 1980s and 1990s.

How and why this happened became clearer by asking the actors in this change. To qualitatively reconstruct their experiences and the way in which they went through the processes just described complemented the quantitative point of view.