Environmental, developmental and personality factors are explored as predictors of motivation to treatment for alcoholism, using concepts such as social situation on admission, treatment career, age education and adventurous patterns of behaviour. The original population consists of 603 severely dependent alcoholics (mean age 40 years, 24% women, 42% compulsorily committed). In structural equation model estimation, 85% of the original cases were used, and included compulsorily as well as voluntarily admitted patients. A reduced model was tried on voluntary patients alone. In the main model, patterns of behaviour and age were not related to the motivation to treatment, while treatment career had some negative impact. Social problems were related to less motivation to treatment. In turn, a worse social situation was related to more treatment experience. The reduced model on voluntary patients alone confirmed the main findings, although more previous treatment tended to be related to more motivation. In conclusion, motivation was mostly related to a better social situation, having �more to lose�. A collapse in the social situation was more an obstacle than a promoter of motivation. There was no support for the statements that �maturing out� would result in more motivation and inconclusive findings concerning the impact on motivation from having many previous treatment experiences. The pattern of behaviour was not directly related to the level of motivation. Based on these findings, the relevance of social work for motivation to treatment is discussed.