It's not so much the young choosing to pre-drink, but the middle-aged.

A Queensland University study's found New Zealanders increase their pre-drinking after the age of 30.

Pre-drinking, pre-loading or pre-gaming was defined as having a couple of drinks at home before going out.

Health services research expert, Dr Cheneal Puljevic told Mike Hosking they looked at the habits of 27 different countries.

"Everybody is doing it differently...there were six countries where we found that pre-drinking seems to increase over the age of 30 and New Zealand is one of those."