Alcohol use is prevalent during college (SAMHSA, 2019). Binge drinking, defined as 4 or more drinks for women and 5 or more drinks for men in a two-hour period (NIAAA, 2022) or on a single occasion (SAMHSA, 2019), is associated with physical injury, physical and sexual assault, drunk driving, alcohol dependence, and mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation during the college years (e.g., Hingson et al., 2017, Patrick et al., 2020). Although most students outgrow binge drinking (Lee & Sher, 2018), some persist and experience alcohol dependence and related problems into middle and later adulthood (Jennison, 2004, O’Neill et al., 2001). Identifying typologies of college drinking and the socio-environmental factors associated with these typologies can provide vital information for the development, tailoring, and implementation of interventions to reduce drinking-related harms.

Although many college students consume alcohol, they vary in the frequency and amount they drink, and not all binge drink. Cross-sectional studies on college alcohol use have predominantly found three classes or “types” of student drinkers: abstainers, low frequency and quantity drinkers, and hazardous or high frequency and quantity drinkers (Beseler et al., 2012, Davoren et al., 2018, Yeater et al., 2018), although some studies have found four classes distinguished by co-occurring drug use (Chiauzzi et al., 2013) and temporality of alcohol use (Cleveland et al., 2012). Binge drinkers are most likely to experience alcohol-related consequences such as missing school, having unprotected and unintended sex, getting into fights, being assaulted and developing alcohol use disorders later in life (e.g., Davoren et al., 2018), and are least likely to engage in protective behaviors to mitigate drinking harms (Barry et al., 2016).

Drinking is embedded in social and ecological contexts, which are important to understanding risk (Braitman et al., 2017, Lewis et al., 2011, Wilkinson and Ivsins, 2017). Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) socio-ecological model posits that behavior is influenced by factors at individual, interpersonal, community, and societal levels. Contextual factors range from the physical environments where students drink (e.g., bars, dorms) to social factors such as who is buying/controlling the alcohol (buying for oneself vs obtaining at a party) and peer norms about drinking (Lipperman-Kreda et al., 2018, Litt et al., 2015, Martens et al., 2006). Compared to drinking in intimate settings such as dorms or restaurants, drinking in large social settings including bars, clubs, and parties is associated with heavier drinking and binge drinking (Braitman et al., 2017, Clapp et al., 2017, Pilatti et al., 2020, Wamboldt et al., 2019). Students who drink in intimate settings tend to consume lower alcohol-content beverages and may not always drink with the intention of getting drunk (Pilatti et al., 2020, Wamboldt et al., 2019).

Students may drink differently based on how they obtain alcohol. Many underage college students rely on friends and acquaintances of legal drinking age, use a fake ID, or obtain alcohol at a party (Fabian et al., 2008). Adolescents who purchase alcohol themselves and obtain from friends or adults are likely to be high-risk drinkers (Jackson et al., 2014). Students who overestimate how much and how often their peers drink also drink more than students who have more accurate perceptions (Collins and Spelman, 2013, Pilatti et al., 2020, Scaglione et al., 2013).

Correlates of drinking typologies may vary across the socio-ecological model. At the individual level, for example, men are more likely than women to engage in heavy and high-risk drinking (Beseler et al., 2012, Gohari et al., 2020, Read et al., 2013, Rinker et al., 2016, Villarosa-Hurlocker and Madson, 2020, Wilsnack et al., 2018) and experience alcohol related consequences (Read et al., 2013, Rinker et al., 2016). Black and Asian students are less likely than White students to engage in heavy and high-risk drinking (Campbell et al., 2021, Wamboldt et al., 2019) and ethnographic data from this study suggest that LGBTQ + students are less likely than cisgender-heterosexual students to drink in large social settings (Wamboldt et al., 2019). Among young adults, higher socio-economic status has been associated with more frequent drinking (Casswell et al., 2003) and elevated odds of binge drinking (McKetta & Keyes, 2020). Developmental factors, including younger age of alcohol initiation (Haardörfer et al., 2021, Hingson and Zha, 2009) and parental alcohol problems (Haardörfer et al., 2021) are predictors of heavy drinking and alcohol problems later in life.

College student drinking patterns may be shaped by community-level factors such as engagement in student activities and feelings of campus connectedness. For example, participation in Greek life has been associated with heavier drinking over the course of college (Capone et al., 2007, Park et al., 2008) and into midlife (McCabe et al., 2018). Similarly, athletes binge drink more than their peers (Green et al., 2014, Tewksbury et al., 2008), although intramural and club sport athletes drink more than varsity athletes (Barry et al., 2015). In contrast, student members of religious or cultural groups (Strano et al., 2004) and political organizations (Lorant et al., 2013) drink and binge drink less than non-members. Alcohol also has been suggested as a mechanism for developing social connections and increasing feelings of connectedness (Brown and Murphy, 2020, Wamboldt et al., 2019).

This paper advances knowledge about associations between social, demographic, attitudinal, and developmental factors and binge drinking among U.S. college students by including contextual factors when determining typologies of drinkers. Among Canadian secondary school students, problem drinkers were more likely to be in “high alcohol-use” schools where drinking was normalized (Gohari et al., 2020). Similarly, an Argentinian study revealed that heavy drinking college students drank in multiple settings (small groups, bars, parties, alone, etc.), and experienced more alcohol-related consequences than those who drank in fewer, more intimate settings (Pilatti et al., 2020). However, to our knowledge, no American college student studies have considered the socio-ecological context, such as where students drink, how they obtain alcohol, and how much they believe their peers are drinking, when developing typologies.

The current study used a person-centered approach to identify socio-ecologically derived latent classes of college student drinkers and socio-ecological correlates of class membership. In contrast to traditional variable-centered approaches like multiple regression, person-centered approaches like Latent Class Analysis (LCA) allow for the identification of qualitatively distinct subgroups of individuals within a population based on a set of manifest indicator variables (Berlin et al., 2014). Including alcohol consumption indicators alongside where students obtain alcohol, where they drink, and their perceptions of peer alcohol use allowed us to consider aspects of the social environment when forming drinking typologies and examining individual- and community-level correlates of class membership. This knowledge may be crucial for better tailoring harm reduction programs and policies to student drinking patterns.