Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of mindfulness on problematic drinking and the mediating roles of emotion regulation, impulsivity, and alcohol abstinence efficacy. Structural equation modeling was conducted by involving 208 undergraduate students from an online survey. The results suggests that mindfulness contributed to problematic drinking not directly but indirectly via its impacts on emotion regulation, impulsivity, and alcohol abstinence efficacy. This suggests that even if mindfulness might not improve problematic drinking directly, it might indirectly improve problematic drinking via mediating variables. At the same time, emotion regulation, the primary mediating variable, was also shown to have a negative path in the direct effect on problematic drinking. This suggests that it might be necessary to consider other mediating variables in the relationship between emotion regulation and problematic drinking. At the end, the limitations and implications of this study were discussed.