A Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) detected a positive impact of the program on the sale of more water and food by the vendors to their customers. This suggests that the vendors followed the program’s guidelines, which recommend selling water and food to counteract the effects caused by alcohol consumption. However, the study found no significant effect on the reduction of violence around those establishments or on the sale of alcohol. That is, the explanation for the zero effect on fights (brawls) is not in the implementation of the program nor the fact that merchants had not been interested in it [1].
The study was conducted in 2019, when a group of researchers decided to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention using an RCT. The evaluation design allowed randomly assigning quadrants of the city to the treatment and control groups. In addition, control regions close to the treatment, i.e., which could be indirectly affected, were taken into account when estimating the effects of the program. In total, 315 establishments received the intervention, and 383 were used as controls.