Brief Psychological Intervention to Reduce Alcohol Consumption

Continuous levels of hazardous alcohol consumption (i.e., 14 or more units per week) is one of the leading risk factors of ill health and early mortality, contributing to around 9,809 deaths a year in the UK. The aim of the present research is to test the effect of helping people to reward themselves when they have successfully reduced/abstained from their previous levels of alcohol consumption. Each participant will be randomly allocated to one of two conditions. The trial requires 128 participants to perform a fully powered statistical analysis. The two conditions include: (1) a control condition (asked to form a plan to reduce/abstain from alcohol consumption), or (2) a weekly self-incentivising condition (asked to reward themselves at the end of each week that they have successfully reduced/abstained their previous levels of alcohol consumption). The main outcome measure will be units of alcohol consumed/not consumed, which will be self-reported at 1-week and 1-month follow-up time points.

Inclusion Criteria: * Aged 18 years or over * Able to understand written English * Competent to provide informed consent * Residing in the UK * Regularly consuming 14 units of alcohol or more at baseline Exclusion Criteria: * Note aged 18 years old or over * Not able to understand written English * Not competent to provide informed consent * Not residing in the UK * Not regularly consuming 14 units of alcohol or more at baseline