Participants were drawn from an existing national representative panel of 2,400 Dutch households. After completing questionnaires, those who reported that they drank at least once a month in the past year were invited to participate in the second phase of the study. A total of 553 (324 men and 229 women) persons consented to maintain a "drinking diary" every day for 2 weeks. The instruments developed by Cooper (1994) assessed four types of drinking motives: drinking to obtain social rewards, to enhance positive mood, to deal with negative emotions, and to avoid social rejection. The Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire was used to measure beliefs about six physical and social effects of drinking and two negative effects. Self-efficacy was defined as the respondent's ability to quit drinking after having a maximum of 2 drinks and was measured by asking respondents to indicate how easy or difficult it would be for them to quit drinking after having 2 drinks in 11 situations. The findings indicate that social and enhancement motives were more often mentioned as reasons for drinking than coping and conformity motives. People who reported drinking to deal with personal problems also reported drinking for social reasons. Positive expectations for the effects of alcohol were not significantly related to drinking measures, and expectations regarding the negative effects of alcohol were related primarily to more general indicators of drinking. Self-efficacy was moderately related to all drinking variables. Drinking motive did not act as a mediator between positive alcohol expectations and drinking, because alcohol expectations and drinking were not significantly directly associated. No systematic moderator effects were apparent for age and gender regarding the links between drinking beliefs and the level of drinking. 1 figure, 4 tables, and 42 references