Declining Nipping of Alcohol and Increasing Sipping of Coffee

Dataset Description

The study uses a cross-national, multilevel dataset combining firm-level, city-level, and country-level data to examine whether rising coffee consumption substitutes for declining alcohol consumption, and how this relationship is moderated by national culture. The dataset covers 112 countries and nearly 50,000 coffee firms.

At the firm level, the data include coffee-producing firms with variables such as firm size, firm age, listing status, subsidiary status, World Compliance (WOCO), technological sector (SIC-based), performance, inter-sector technological distance, and city cluster density. All firm-level variables are log-transformed and standardized and serve as Level-1 predictors in the multilevel models.

Firms are nested within cities (Level 2), allowing the analysis to control for shared local conditions such as infrastructure, market size, and regional consumption environments through city-level random and fixed effects.

At the country level (Level 3), the dataset includes:

Alcohol consumption per capita (liters of pure alcohol per person aged 15+), from the World Health Organization.

Coffee consumption per capita (kilograms per person per year), from the International Coffee Organization.

Economic and demographic controls, including GDP per capita and the share of the Muslim population.

National culture indicators, measured using Hofstede’s four dimensions: Power Distance (PDI), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), and Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI).

The main dependent variable is alcohol consumption per capita, while coffee consumption per capita is the key independent variable. Cultural dimensions enter the models both as direct predictors and as interaction terms with coffee consumption, allowing the study to test cultural moderation of the substitution effect.

The dataset is designed for multilevel mixed-effects and fixed-effects estimation, enabling robust cross-level inference that links firm-level industrial dynamics to national consumption outcomes within distinct cultural and institutional contexts.