gambling research paper topics

108 Gambling Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best gambling topic ideas & essay examples, ⭐ good research topics about gambling, 👍 simple & easy gambling essay titles, ❓ research questions on gambling.

• Gambling Benefits and Disadvantages Also in relation to this, the gambling industry offers employment to a myriad of people. This is thus a boost to the economy of the local people.
• Online Gambling Addiction Gambling is an addiction as one becomes dependent on the activity; he cannot do without it, it becomes a necessity to him. Online gambling is more of an addiction than a game to the players.
• Gambling as an Acceptable Form of Leisure In leisure one should have the freedom to choose which activity to engage in and at what time to do it. Gambling is considered as a form of leisure activity and one has freedom to […]
• Online Gambling Legalization When asked about the unavoidable passing of a law decriminalizing online gambling in the US, the CEO of Sams Casino stated that the legislation would not have any impact on their trade.
• Impact of Gambling on the Bahamian Economy Sources from the government of The Bahamas indicate that the first of gambling casinos in the name of the Bahamian Club opened for business from the capital of Nassau towards the close of the 1920s […]
• Gambling’s Positive and Negative Effects In some cases such as in lotteries, the financial reward is incidental and secondary because the participants drive is to help raise funds for the course the lottery promotes.
• Comorbid Gambling Disorder and Alcohol Dependence The patient was alert and oriented to the event, time, and place and appropriately dressed for the occasion, season, and weather.
• Gambling: Debate Against the Legislation of Gambling More significantly, the Australian government has so far adopted a conciliatory and indulgent attitude towards most kinds of gambling, which has been the main reason for the rampant growth and proliferation of both forms of […]
• Impact of Internet Use, Online Gaming, and Gambling Among College Students The researchers refute the previous works of literature that have analyzed the significance of the Internet, whereby previous studies depict that the Internet plays a significant role in preventing depression ordeals and making people happy.
• History of Gambling in the US and How It Connects With the Current Times It is possible to note that it is in the Americans’ blood from the sides of Native Americans and the Pilgrims to bet.
• Effects of Gambling on Happiness: Research in the Nursing Homes The objective of the study was to determine whether the elderly in the nursing homes would prefer the introduction of gambling as a happiness stimulant.
• The Era of Legalized Gambling Importantly, they build on each other to demonstrate power in taking risk action and actually how legalizations of the practice can influence character integrity. The conclusive speculation is whether there is a changing definition of […]
• Legalization of Casino Gambling in Hong Kong Thus, the problem is in the controversy of the allegedly positive and negative effects of gambling legalization on the social and economic development of Hong Kong.
• Internet Gambling Issue Description There are certain new features added to the gambling game by the internet gamblers, such as proxy gambling, gambling for credit and claim of gambling in the virtual offshore gambling environment.
• The Problem of Gambling in the Modern Society as the Type of Addiction Old people and adolescents, rich and poor, all of them may become the prisoners of this addiction and the only way out may be the treatment, serious psychological treatment, as gambling addiction is the disease […]
• The Psychology of Lottery Gambling This kind of gambling also refers to the expenditure of more currency than was first future and then returning afterward to win the cash lost in the history.
• Gambling, Fraud and Security in Banking By supervising the institutions and banks, there exists openness into the dealings of the banks and this allows investors to get full information about the banks before investing.
• High-Risk Gambles Prevention in Banking The elements of a valid contract between banks and their customers vary according to the context of the contract. This involves the willingness and devotion of both parties to a particular cause.
• Earmark Gambling Revenue Legislation in Illinois The state of Illinois enacted PA 91-40 in 1999, which has affected the gaming industry. The growth in the revenue from gambling has attracted the attention of lawmakers.
• Jay Cohen’s Gambling Company and American Laws Disregarding the controversy concerning the harmful effects of gambling, one might want to ask the question concerning whether the USA had the right to question the policies of other states, even on such a dubious […]
• Internet Gambling and Its Impact on the Youth However, it is necessary to remember that apart from obvious issues with gambling, it is also associated with higher crime rates and it is inevitable that online gambling will fuel an increase of crime rates […]
• Fantasy Football: Gambling Regulation and Outlawing Taking this into consideration, it can be stated that fantasy football and its other iterations on sites like Draft Kings is not a form of gambling.
• Gambling and Addiction’s Effects on Neuroplasticity It was established further that blood flow from other parts of the body to the brain is changes whenever an individual engages in gambling, which is similar to the intake of cocaine.
• Gambling and Its Effect on Families The second notable effect of gambling on families is that it results in the increased cases of domestic violence. The third notable effect of gambling on the family is that it increases child abuse and […]
• Casino Gambling Legalization in Texas In spite of the fact that the idea of legalizing casino gambling is often discussed by opponents as the challenge to the community’s social health, Texas should approve the legalization of casino gambling because this […]
• Economic Issues: Casino Gambling Evidence from several surveys suggests that the competition from various states within the US has contributed to the growth and expansion of casinos. The growth and expansion of casinos has been fueled by competition from […]
• Casino Gambling Industry Trends This will make suppliers known to the rest of the companies operating in the industry. The bargaining power of the supplier in the casino gambling industry is also high.
• Gambling Addiction Research Approaches Therefore, it is possible to claim that the disease model is quite a comprehensive approach which covers several possible factors which lead to the development of the disorder.
• Public Policy on Youth Gambling The outcomes of the research would be useful in identifying the program outcomes as well as provide answers to the whys of youth gambling.
• Gambling and Gaming Industry Compulsive gambling Compulsive gambling refers to the inability to control an individual’s urge to engage in gambling activities. Other gambling activities in the state are classified as a misdemeanour.
• Revision of Problem Gambling The reasoning behind the researchers’ decision to focus on the social and financial factors of gambling within the UK is because of the significant increase in gambling-related problems within Britain.
• Positive Aspects of Gambling It is therefore essential for sociologist to understand the positive aspects of gambling and the impact that it has on our lives. However, it is essential to control the level of gambling.
• Argument for Legalization of Gambling in Texas The subject of gambling is that the gambler losses the money offered if the outcome of the event is against him or her or gains the money offered if the event outcome favors the gambler.
• Gambling in Kentucky: Moral Obligations vs. the Economical Reasons The industries that added to the well-being of the state and its GNP since the day the state was founded and throughout the past century was the coal mining, which contributed to the state’s income […]
• Gambling in Ohio The purpose of this project is to investigate the history of gambling in Ohio, its development in the 1990s, and its impact on ordinary human lives in order to underline the significance of this process […]
• Gambling Projects: Impact on the Cultural Transformations in America The high rates of unemployment and low earning levels may coerce residents to engage in gambling, hoping that they would enrich themselves.
• Gambling in Four Perspectives A gambler faces the challenge of imminent effect of addiction to the effects of gambling every time he continues with the exercise of gambling something that may take long to drop.
• Gambling Discusses Three Causes or Effects of Gambling and Their Impact on Society
• Taking the Risk: Love, Luck, and Gambling in Literature
• Financial Crime and Gambling in a Virtual World
• Management and Information Issues for Industries With Externalities: The Case of Casino Gambling
• Internet Gambling Consumers Industry and Regulation
• Human Resource Management for Gambling Industry
• Youth Gambling Abuse: Issues and Challenges to Counselling
• Differentiate Between Investment Speculation and Gambling
• The Gambling and Its Influence on the Individual and Society
• Assessing the Differential Impacts of Online, Mixed, and Offline Gambling
• Gambling Taxation: Public Equity in the Gambling Business
• Risk and Protective Factors in Problem Gambling: An Examination of Psychological Resilience
• Behavioral Accounts and Treatments of Problem Gambling
• Cognitive Remediation Interventions for Gambling Disorder
• Gambling: The Problems and History of Addiction, Helpfulness, and Tragedy
• Casino Gambling Myths and Facts: When Fun Becomes Dangerous
• Associations Between Problem Gambling, Socio-Demographics, Mental Health Factors, and Gambling Type
• Gambling With the House Money and Trying to Break Even: The Effects of Prior Outcomes on Risky Choice
• Differences in Effects on Brain Functional Connectivity in Patients With Internet-Based Gambling Disorder and Internet Gaming Disorder
• Gambling Addiction Hidden Evils of Online Play
• Diagnosing and Treating Pathological Addictions: Compulsive Gambling, Drugs, and Alcohol Addiction
• The Pleasure Principle: Gambling and Brain Chemistry
• Gambling, Geographical Variations, and Deprivation: Findings From the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey
• Behavior Change Strategies for Problem Gambling: An Analysis of Online Posts
• Economic Recession Affects Gambling Participation but Not Problematic Gambling: Results From a Population-Based Follow-up Study
• Different Gambling Consequence Western Civilisation Countries Sociology
• Gambling Among Culturally Diverse Older Adults: A Systematic Review of Qualitative and Quantitative Data
• Decision-Making Under Risk, but Not Under Ambiguity, Predicts Pathological Gambling in Discrete Types of Abstinent Substance Users
• Gambling: The Game Where Everyone Is a Loser
• The Problems and Issues Concerning Legalization of Online Gambling
• Gambling Attitudes and Beliefs Associated With Problem Gambling: The Cohort Effect of Baby Boomers
• Pathological Compulsive Gambling: Diagnosis and Treatment of a Medical Disorder
• Accounting and Financial Reports in the Gambling Monopoly – Measures for a Moral Economic System
• Gender, Gambling Settings and Gambling Behaviors Among Undergraduate Poker Players
• Gambling Among Young Croatian People: An Exploratory Study of the Relationship Between Psychopathic Traits, Risk-Taking Tendencies, and Gambling-Related Problems
• Buying and Selling Price for Risky Lotteries and Expected Utility Theory With Gambling Wealth
• Charitable Giving and Charitable Gambling: Cognitive Abilities, Non-cognitive Skills, and Gambling Behaviors
• Compulsive Buying Behavior: Characteristics of Comorbidity With Gambling Disorder
• Motivation, Personality Type, and the Choice Between Skill and Luck Gambling Products
• Gambling and the Use of Credit: An Individual and Household Level Analysis
• Why Will Internet Gambling Prohibition Ultimately Fail?
• How Do Binge Drinking, Gambling, and Procrastinating Affect Students?
• What Motivates Gambling Behavior?
• Does Charitable Gamble Crowd Out Charitable Donations?
• What Should the State’s Policy Be On Gambling?
• How Does Gambling Effect the Economy?
• What Does the Bible Say About Gambling?
• Are There Gambling Effects in Incentive-Compatible Elicitations of Reservation Prices?
• How Does the Gambling Affect the Society?
• Does Indian Casino Gambling Reduce State Revenues?
• How Does the Stigma of Problem Gambling Influence Help-Seeking, Treatment, and Recovery?
• Why Are Gambling Markets Organised So Differently From Financial Markets?
• Can Expected Utility Theory Explain Gambling?
• What Is the Attraction to Gambling?
• Should Sports Gambling Be Legalized?
• Who Gets Hurt From Gambling?
• How Do Gambling Addiction Affect Families?
• Does Individual Gambling Behavior Vary Across Gambling Venues With Differing Numbers of Terminals?
• Why Gambling Should Not Be Prohibited or Policed?
• How Has Gambling Become the Favorite Distraction of Americans?
• Should Age Restriction for Gambling Be Increase?
• Are There Net State Social Benefits or Costs From Legalizing Slot Machine Gambling?
• What Are the Possible Circumstances for Gambling?
• How Do Habit and Satisfaction Affect Player Retention for Online Gambling?
• Does DRD2 Taq1A Mediate Aripiprazole-Induced Gambling Disorder?
• How Does the Online Gambling Ban Help Al Qaeda?
• Does Pareto Rule Internet Gambling?
• Should Governments Sponsor Gambling?
• What Are the Problems Associated With Gambling?
• Why Isn’t Congress Closing a Loophole That Fosters Gambling in College?
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126 Gambling Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Gambling is a popular pastime that has been around for centuries. Whether it's placing bets on sports games, playing poker at a casino, or buying lottery tickets, the thrill of risking money in the hopes of winning big is something that many people enjoy.

If you're looking for essay topics related to gambling, you're in luck. We've compiled a list of 126 gambling essay topic ideas and examples to help inspire your next paper. From the ethics of gambling to the impact of online gambling on society, there are plenty of angles to explore in this fascinating topic.

• The history of gambling
• The psychology of gambling addiction
• The ethics of gambling
• The impact of gambling on society
• The economics of gambling
• The role of luck in gambling
• The legality of online gambling
• The relationship between gambling and crime
• The effects of gambling on mental health
• The role of gambling in popular culture
• The impact of gambling on families
• The regulation of gambling
• The social stigma of gambling
• The role of gambling in politics
• The impact of gambling on the economy
• The link between gambling and substance abuse
• The role of gambling in sports
• The impact of gambling on indigenous communities
• The relationship between gambling and religion
• The effects of gambling advertising
• The impact of gambling on tourism
• The relationship between gambling and technology
• The role of gambling in education
• The impact of gambling on the environment
• The link between gambling and mental illness
• The role of gambling in history
• The impact of gambling on the brain
• The relationship between gambling and poverty
• The effects of gambling on relationships
• The role of gambling in the criminal justice system
• The impact of gambling on youth
• The link between gambling and suicide
• The role of gambling in healthcare
• The impact of gambling on the elderly
• The relationship between gambling and gender
• The effects of gambling on personal finances
• The role of gambling in international relations
• The impact of gambling on education
• The link between gambling and public health
• The role of gambling in social welfare
• The impact of gambling on mental health services
• The relationship between gambling and social services
• The effects of gambling on community development
• The role of gambling in urban planning
• The impact of gambling on rural communities
• The link between gambling and economic development
• The role of gambling in environmental conservation
• The impact of gambling on cultural heritage
• The relationship between gambling and human rights
• The effects of gambling on social justice
• The role of gambling in international development
• The impact of gambling on global health
• The link between gambling and international trade
• The role of gambling in sustainable development
• The impact of gambling on climate change
• The relationship between gambling and poverty reduction
• The effects of gambling on gender equality
• The role of gambling in conflict resolution
• The impact of gambling on peacebuilding
• The link between gambling and human security
• The role of gambling in disaster response
• The impact of gambling on humanitarian aid
• The relationship between gambling and international law
• The effects of gambling on global governance
• The role of gambling in international organizations
• The impact of gambling on regional cooperation
• The link between gambling and international relations
• The role of gambling in diplomacy
• The impact of gambling on conflict prevention
• The relationship between gambling and peacekeeping
• The effects of gambling on peacebuilding
• The role of gambling in post-conflict reconstruction
• The impact of gambling on transitional justice
• The link between gambling and human rights
• The role of gambling in international criminal justice
• The impact of gambling on international humanitarian law
• The relationship between gambling and international human rights law
• The effects of gambling on international refugee law
• The role of gambling in international environmental law
• The impact of gambling on international trade law
• The link between gambling and international investment law
• The role of gambling in international economic law
• The impact of gambling on international financial law
• The relationship between gambling and international banking law
• The effects of gambling on international tax law
• The role of gambling in international competition law
• The impact of gambling on international antitrust law
• The link between gambling and international intellectual property law
• The role of gambling in international labor law
• The impact of gambling on international human rights law

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• Published: 04 February 2021

The association between gambling and financial, social and health outcomes in big financial data

• Naomi Muggleton   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6462-3237 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Paula Parpart 2 , 3 , 4 ,
• Philip Newall   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1660-9254 5 , 6 ,
• David Leake 3 ,
• John Gathergood   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0067-8324 7 &
• Neil Stewart   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2202-018X 2  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  5 ,  pages 319–326 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Gambling is an ordinary pastime for some people, but is associated with addiction and harmful outcomes for others. Evidence of these harms is limited to small-sample, cross-sectional self-reports, such as prevalence surveys. We examine the association between gambling as a proportion of monthly income and 31 financial, social and health outcomes using anonymous data provided by a UK retail bank, aggregated for up to 6.5 million individuals over up to 7 years. Gambling is associated with higher financial distress and lower financial inclusion and planning, and with negative lifestyle, health, well-being and leisure outcomes. Gambling is associated with higher rates of future unemployment and physical disability and, at the highest levels, with substantially increased mortality. Gambling is persistent over time, growing over the sample period, and has higher negative associations among the heaviest gamblers. Our findings inform the debate over the relationship between gambling and life experiences across the population.

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Data availability.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from LBG but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of LBG.

Code availability

Data were extracted from LBG databases using Teradata SQL Assistant (v.15.10.1.9). Data analysis was conducted using R (v.3.4.4). The SQL code that supports the analysis is commercially sensitive and is therefore not publicly available. The code is available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of LBG. The R code that supports this analysis can be found at github.com/nmuggleton/gambling_related_harm . Commercially sensitive code has been redacted. This should not affect the interpretability of the code.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Trendl and H. Wardle for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. We thank R. Burton, Z. Clarke, C. Henn, J. Marsden, M. Regan, C. Sharpe and M. Smolar from Public Health England and L. Balla, L. Cole, K. King, P. Rangeley, H. Rhodes, C. Rogers and D. Taylor from the Gambling Commission for providing feedback on a presentation of this work. We thank A. Akerkar, D. Collins, T. Davies, D. Eales, E. Fitzhugh, P. Jefferson, T. Bo Kim, M. King, A. Lazarou, M. Lien and G. Sanders for their assistance. We thank the Customer Vulnerability team, with whom we worked as part of their ongoing strategy to help vulnerable customers. We acknowledge funding from LBG, who also provided us with the data but had no other role in study design, analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of LBG, its affiliates or its employees. We also acknowledge funding from Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grants nos. ES/P008976/1 and ES/N018192/1. The ESRC had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Naomi Muggleton

Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Naomi Muggleton, Paula Parpart & Neil Stewart

Applied Science, Lloyds Banking Group, London, UK

Naomi Muggleton, Paula Parpart & David Leake

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Paula Parpart

Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

• Philip Newall

School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQ University, Melbourne, Australia

School of Economics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

John Gathergood

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Contributions

P.P. and P.N. proposed the initial concept. All authors contributed to the design of the analysis and the interpretation of the results. J.G. and N.S. wrote the initial draft; all authors contributed to the revision. N.M. and P.P. constructed variables and N.M. prepared all figures and tables. D.L. established collaboration with LBG. D.L., J.G. and N.S. secured funding for the research. P.N. conducted a review of the existing literature.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Naomi Muggleton .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

N.M. was previously, and D.L. is currently, an employee of LBG. P.P. was previously a contractor at LBG. They do not, however, have any direct or indirect interest in revenues accrued from the gambling industry. P.N. was a special advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee Enquiry on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry. In the last 3 years, P.N. has contributed to research projects funded by GambleAware, Gambling Research Australia, NSW Responsible Gambling Fund and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. In 2019, P.N. received travel and accommodation funding from the Spanish Federation of Rehabilitated Gamblers and in 2020 received an open access fee grant from Gambling Research Exchange Ontario. All other authors have no competing interests.

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Muggleton, N., Parpart, P., Newall, P. et al. The association between gambling and financial, social and health outcomes in big financial data. Nat Hum Behav 5 , 319–326 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01045-w

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An Overview of the Economics of Sports Gambling and an Introduction to the Symposium

Victor matheson.

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, USA

Gambling in the Ancient World

Gambling likely predates recorded history. The casting of lots (from which we get the modern term “lottery”) is mentioned both in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, most famously when Roman soldiers cast lots for the clothes of Jesus during his crucifixion. In Greek mythology, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus divided the heavens, the seas, and the underworld through a game of chance.

Organized sports also have a long history. The Ancient Olympic Games date back to 776 BCE and persisted until 394 AD. The Circus Maximum in Rome, the home of horse and chariot racing events as well as gladiatorial contests for over one thousand years, was originally constructed around 500 BCE, and the Colosseum in Rome began hosting sporting events including gladiator fights in 80 AD. Variations of the ball game Pitz were played in Mesoamerica for nearly 3000 years beginning as early as 1400 BCE (Matheson 2019 ).

Given the prevalence of both sporting contests and gambling across many ancient civilizations, it is natural to conclude that the combined activity of sports gambling also has a long history. And, indeed it is widely reported that gambling was a popular activity at the Olympics and other ancient Panhellenic events in Greece and at the racing and fighting contests in ancient Rome. Problems associated with gambling were also widely reported. As early as 388 BCE, the boxer Eupolus of Thessaly was known to have paid opponents to throw fights in the Olympics. Rampant gambling in Rome led Caesar Augustus (c. BCE 20) to limit the activity to only a week-long festival called “Saturnalia” celebrated around the time of the winter solstice, while Emperor Commodus (AD 192) turned the royal palace into a casino and bankrupted the Roman Empire along the way (Matheson et al. 2018 ).

Just as in the modern day, gambling was often looked down upon by societal leaders in antiquity. Horace (Ode III., 24; 23 BCE) wrote, “The young Roman is no longer devoted to the manly habits of riding and hunting; his skills seem to develop more in the games of chances forbidden by law.” Juvenal (Satire I, 87; 101 AD), well-known for coining the term “bread and circuses” wrote, “Never has the torrent of vice been to irresistible or the depths of avarice more absorbing, or the passion for gambling more intense. None approach nowadays the gambling table with the purse; they must carry their strongbox. What can we think of these profligates more ready to lose 100,000 than to give a tunic to a slave dying with cold.” (Matheson 2019 ).

Gambling in Renaissance and Pre-industrial Revolution Europe

Gambling in Europe persisted into the Middle Ages and Renaissance. For example, although the true origins of the famous columns in Venice’s Piazza San Marco are lost to the mysteries of time, at least one history suggests they were erected around 1127 by Nicholas Barattieri, who was rewarded for this task by the local government with an exclusive right to operate a gaming table between the columns, an activity otherwise officially prohibited in the Republic (Schiavon 2020 ).

However, without the large sporting events of the ancient world, gambling turned more toward to precursors of modern casino games. Indeed, the gambling that occurred in the “small houses” or “casini” of the city of Venice is the origin of the modern term “casino,” and in 1638 Il Ridotto, “the Private Room,” became the first public, legal casino in the region (Schwarz 2006 ).

Until the formation of professional sports leagues in the mid- to late nineteenth century, horse racing was the predominant type of sports gambling across Europe and North America. The Newmarket Racecourse near Cambridge, UK, was founded in 1636 although races at the location date to even earlier. The racetrack was frequented by King Charles II earning horse racing the title of “the Sport of Kings” (Black 1891 ). The first racetrack in North America was established on Long Island in 1665, and horse racing has persisted in the USA since that time.

Prior to the mid-1800s, bets in horseracing were handled by bookmakers who set odds on individual races. This carries risk for the bookmaker who may be forced to pay out large winning bets as well as the bettor who may find that the bookmaker lacks the funds to cover all payouts. This problem was solved in 1867 in Paris when Joseph Oller, who later went on to open the famous Parisian nightclub the Moulin Rouge, developed pari-mutuel betting.

Under pari-mutuel betting, the returns are based not on independent odds set by a bookmaker but instead are endogenously generated by the gamblers themselves based upon the number and size of the bets made on various race participants (Canymeres 1946 ). This betting system rapidly became wildly popular for racing in Europe and USA and remains the standard for horse racing today throughout the world.

Gambling Throughout US History

Gambling was a common activity throughout colonial and early American history. Lotteries funded activities such as the original European settlement at Jamestown, the operations of prestigious universities such as Harvard and Princeton, and construction of historic Faneuil Hall in Boston. Card rooms were not unusual at taverns and roadhouses across the country, and the activity moved west onto riverboats and into saloons as westward expansion occurred during the 1800s (Grote and Matheson 2017 ).

However, the late 1800s and early 1900 witnessed a widespread decline the legality of all types of gambling throughout the USA. In the sports realm, by 1900 betting on horse races was made illegal except in Kentucky and Maryland, states that to this day host two of the three Triple Crown events in American horseracing, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes. States began to relegalize gambling on horse racing in the 1930s as a method of economic stimulus during the Great Depression. Total horse racing handle peaked in the 1970s and has generally declined since that time due to increased competition from alternative forms of gambling such as state lotteries and casinos (and, in fact, many racetracks nationwide, known as “racinos,” are permitted to offer alternative forms of gambling such as slot machines on their grounds (Nash 2009 )). In 2019, horse racing’s handle in the USA totaled $11.0 billion (Jockey Club 2020 ).

The birth of professional sports leagues in the USA also gave immediate rise to new betting opportunities, as well as problems associated with corruption. The oldest professional league in the USA, baseball’s National League, formed in 1876, and by 1877 the Louisville Grays ended the season mired in a betting scandal and ceased operations. Similarly in football, the Ohio League, a forerunner to the modern National Football League (NFL), began play in 1903, and by 1906, the league was embroiled in a match fixing scandal between the Canton Bulldogs and the Massillon Tigers (Grote and Matheson 2017 ).

During the early years of professional sports leagues in the USA, betting on games, although generally illegal like most gambling in the period, was common either through direct bets made with bookies or through “pool cards” allowing gamblers to bet on a slate of games. Nevada, which in 1931 became the first state to relegalize most forms of gambling, authorized sports gambling in 1949, but high tax rates on wagers prevented major casinos from running sports books until 1974. Following the elimination of a 10% tax on sports gambling revenues in the state, the sport betting handle rose dramatically from $825,767 in 1973 to $3,873,217 in 1974, to $26,170,328 in 1975 (Grote and Matheson 2017 ). By 2019, Nevada’s 192 sportsbooks took in $5.3 billion in wagers or roughly 2.7% of total gaming revenues for the state (Nevada Gaming Control Board 2019 ).

While Nevada remained the only state offering full sports books, Montana, Oregon, and Delaware all offered pool cards through their state lotteries beginning in the 1970s. Montana first offered legal pool cards in 1974. Delaware followed in 1976 (even winning a court case against the NFL for the right to offer sports gambling), but its games folded in the following year due to difficulties in adhering to the state’s statutory guidelines about lottery contributions to state coffers. The Oregon Lottery sold NFL pool cards from 1998 to 2007 and National Basketball Association (NBA) game tickets in 1998 and 1999 (although the NBA ticket did not include games featuring Portland’s local NBA team). Pressure from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) eventually led the state to terminate its sports gambling offerings under the threat of losing the opportunity to host NCAA post-season men’s basketball tournament (March Madness) games (Grote and Matheson 2017 ).

The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PAPSA), passed in 1992, prohibited states from legalizing sports gambling in any form including lotteries, casinos, and tribal casinos while grandfathering in the four states with existing sports gambling operations. In mid 2010s, the state of New Jersey, in an effort to revive its flagging casinos in Atlantic City, sued to overturn PAPSA, and in May 2018, the US Supreme Court declared PAPSA unconstitutional. While this ruling did not legalize sports gambling in any states, it did allow states the option to legalize sports gambling if they so choose. This symposium examines some of the economic issues facing the sports gambling industry as the American market opens up.

Issues Facing the New Sports Gambling Industry

The first and perhaps easiest question facing the industry is how quickly and how widely will sports gambling be adopted by states? Here it seems clear that sports gambling will follow the pattern seen in lottery and casino adoption, although almost certainly at a much faster pace. As noted by Garrett and Marsh ( 2002 ), once states began to legalize state lotteries, neighboring states began to feel pressure to legalize their own state games or otherwise lose consumer spending to lottery players crossing the border to buy tickets.

By 2020, this pressure had led all but 6 states to adopt lotteries after the first state lottery was reestablished in New Hampshire in 1964. Among the holdouts, Alaska and Hawaii are protected geographically from cross-border purchases, Nevada’s powerful gambling industry has successfully prevented the adoption of a state-sponsored competitor, and conservative religious cultures in Alabama, Mississippi, and Utah have stopped lotteries there. (Religious concerns have not stopped Mississippi from legalizing sports gambling, however. Perhaps God just really wants to put a few bucks down on Ole Miss to upset the Tide this year.)

With respect to sports gambling, New Jersey and Delaware legalized the activity immediately upon the Court’s decision in 2018, and many states followed suit. By the end of 2020, 20 states and the District of Columbia had legalized sports gambling, 6 had legalized sports gambling but were pending launch, and over 20 more states were considering legislation (Rodenberg 2020 ). It appears that sports gambling will soon be legal nearly nationwide.

The next big question facing the industry is assessing the potential size of the sports betting market. If sports wagering is restricted to in-person betting at existing casinos, the impact of nationwide legalization is likely to be quite modest. Extrapolating Nevada’s sport wagering data to the national casino market suggests that nationwide legalization might lead to as much as $20 billion in annual wagers and just under $1 billion in net casino revenues. While these figures may seem high, they pale in comparison to gambling figures in the UK where sports betting has been legal (although highly regulated) since 1960 and is widely available through over 8300 (as of March 2019) small, commercial betting shops spread throughout the country as well as through online betting sites.

In the most recent fiscal year prior to shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person betting shops in the UK generated $3.7 billion and online gambling generated another $2.8 billion in net gambling revenues (UK Gambling Commission 2020 ). This implies that UK bettors placed roughly $130 billion in wagers in 2019 or about $2000 per person in the country. If industry were to achieve a similar level of popularity in the US market, this would suggest over $600 billion in annual wagers and $32 billion in net sport gambling revenue. The $32 billion figure would be roughly twice the net gambling revenue generated by state lotteries across the country and slightly less than the $42 billion in net casino gaming revenue generated across the USA. Such revenue figures would likely only be possible with widespread adoption of legalized mobile sports gambling as well as within-game betting on individual plays as opposed to wagering solely on game outcomes.

Obviously, another major question facing the industry is the extent to which expanded access to sports gambling will bring in new players to the gambling industry overall or whether it will simply cannibalize existing gambling options such as state lotteries, horse racing, or casino gaming. The first paper in this symposium examines this topic by analyzing the determinants of sport gambling handle and its effects on other casino gaming at West Virginia casinos during roughly the first year of legalized sports betting in the state (Humpheys 2021). Brad Humphreys finds that the introduction of sports gambling seems to have significantly decreased overall state gaming tax revenues as gains from sport gambling taxes were far outweighed by decreases in tax revenues from video lottery terminals.

Of course, even if the problem of cannibalization is avoided by sports gambling attracting a new customer base, this is not without its own set of problems as sports wagering may introduce an entirely new population to the problems associated with pathological gambling and problem gaming (McGowan 2014 ). The second paper in this symposium examines health outcomes in Canada related to participation in gambling activities (Humphreys et al. 2021 ). Brad Humphreys, John Nyman, and Jane Ruseski show that recreational gambling has either no effect or even actually reduces the probability of having certain chronic health conditions and has a positive impact on life satisfaction suggesting the possibility that expanded sport gambling in the USA may not be associated with significant adverse health outcomes.

Legalized sports gambling is certain to bring about winners and losers. As noted above, depending on the level of cannibalization, other forms of gambling are likely to be losers such as horse racing, which is likely to continue its long-term decline in gambling handle (Nash 2009 ), and potentially casino gaming as identified by Humphreys ( 2021 ) in this symposium. On the other hand, sports book operators and mobile application developers are likely winners, so casinos themselves may either be either winners or losers in sports gambling legalization. It is interesting to note that established casinos have not been the only players to enter the online sports gambling market. In many states, the companies FanDuel and DraftKings, who prior to sports gambling legalization operated online fantasy football competitions of controversial legality, have already been able to leverage their fan bases in the online fantasy sports gaming communities into more traditional online sports gambling opportunities.

The sports leagues themselves may also be either winners or losers. Historically in the USA, leagues strongly opposed legal sports betting due to the potential for corruption. The history of sports in the USA is littered with betting scandals from the earliest days of the previously mentioned Louisville Grays and Canton Bulldogs to the infamous 1919 “Black Sox” World Series scandal to the 1948 NCAA basketball point-shaving scheme to the more recent actions of Major League Baseball (MLB) player and manager Pete Rose or NBA referee Tim Donaghy.

More recently, however, leagues have become more supportive of sports betting. In part, leagues acknowledge that legal betting markets make it easier for regulators to uncover suspicious betting behavior that could suggest corruption. More importantly, teams and leagues have also slowly recognized the potential for higher fan interest if fans have the opportunity to gamble on games. There is no doubt that the NCAA can attribute a significant portion of its 23-year, $19.6 billion television contract for March Madness on the popularity of “bracket pools,” and likewise the NFL understands the degree to which the explosion of fantasy football leagues has increased the popularity of its games. Humphreys et al. ( 2013 ) developed evidence of a significant correlation between betting and television viewership for regular season men’s NCAA basketball games.

Furthermore, the dramatic increase in professional athlete salaries over the past several decades in the USA has reduced worries of corruption. It is highly unlikely that star players in any major US league would jeopardize their massive earning potential as an athlete by accepting a bribe to alter a game outcome (and non-star players to whom a bribe could potentially be profitable are rarely in a position to influence games).

Those sports that remain at more significant risk to corruption are those with a high level of fan interest but low player salaries. This describes the working conditions of athletes prior to free-agency in the USA such as during the 1919 Black Sox scandal, referees like Tim Donaghy, and players in minor leagues or small national leagues as well as cricket players prior to the relatively recent formation of the Indian Premier League. It also describes the conditions of college athletes in the USA as the NCAA has successfully operated a cartel restricting the ability of even top college players from earning money as a player despite playing for teams generating millions or tens of millions of dollars annually for their host institutions. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the NCAA remains adamantly opposed to sport gambling in contrast to the major professional leagues in the USA.

Sports leagues are naturally eager to take steps to protect themselves against potential corruption in the wake of expanded gambling opportunities. The third paper in the symposium (Depken and Gandar 2021 ) explores the topic of integrity fees, payments by sports books to leagues, supposedly to pay for monitoring to ensure against match fixing. Craig Depken and John Gandar find evidence that integrity fees might influence sports books to establish lines that would minimize the chances for payouts in certain game situations.

Finally, legalized sports gambling will provide researchers with troves of new data to analyze one of the oldest questions in gambling economics: are sports betting markets efficient? The final paper in this symposium provides an excellent example of this type of research (Brymer et al. 2021 ). Rhett Brymer, Ryan M. Rodenberg, Huimiao Zheng, and Tim R. Holcomb examine whether referees in college football’s major conferences can be shown to have particular biases and if these biases are appropriately accounted for in the gambling markets. Studies like these will remain a fertile area for continued economic research.

As guest editor, I wish to thank Eastern Economic Journal co-editors Cynthia Bansak and Allan Zebedee, participants in the sports economics sessions at the 39th annual Eastern Economic Association Conference in New York City, February 2019, and numerous anonymous referees for their assistance in putting together this symposium. Most importantly, thanks go out to Eastern Economic Association Vice President Brad Humphreys who both proposed this symposium and collected and reviewed the participating papers. His name should really be on this guest editor’s introduction, but I guess he will have to settle to being co-author on two fine contributions within this symposium.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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EDITORIAL article

Editorial: problem gambling: summarizing research findings and defining new horizons.

• 1 Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
• 2 Department of Neurofarba, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
• 3 Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
• 4 University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
• 5 McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

Editorial on the Research Topic Problem Gambling: Summarizing Research Findings and Defining New Horizons

Introduction

More than a decade ago, Shaffer et al. (2006) reported that gambling-related research was growing at an exponential rate. Since that time, this trend appears to have continued, and much more is now known about this particular form of risky behavior. Nevertheless, there is still a general tendency to not perceive gambling as a potential danger for youth and other vulnerable populations.

The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) included “gambling disorder” as the only condition in the section “non-substance-related disorders.” Moreover, it was specified that this disorder can indeed occur in adolescence, young adulthood or even late adulthood. Despite this fact, theoretical and applied research on problem gambling especially with regard to adolescence and other risk groups still remains fragmentary. For this reason, we felt it to be important to organize a special research topic on gambling. The primary goals were to highlight the necessity of considering excessive gambling as a potential harmful activity, to summarize the state-of-art of international research on different aspects of the topic and to offer important novel findings relevant for advancing knowledge in the field of gambling. Taken together, the contributions can be classified into four broad categories: (1) youth gambling, (2) risk factors in adulthood, (3) measurement issues, and (4) clinical research.

Overview of Contributing Papers

In total, 18 papers are presented in this special issue. The first central domain refers to gambling among youth. Even though regulated forms of gambling are generally prohibited to minors, there is a considerable body of research that proves their involvement in gambling activities. A significant minority of adolescents even show gambling-related psychosocial problems ( Calado et al., 2017 ). In addition, several studies have explored risk and protective factors in childhood, adolescence or young adulthood for the development of problem gambling symptoms ( Dowling et al., 2017 ). Four papers in this issue have specifically focused on youth gambling, contributing to the current knowledge by exploring less studied psychosocial constructs or subpopulations and offering guidelines for the conception of interventions. From the broader social perspective, Canale et al. presented the first study with a large-scale nationally representative sample of adolescents to examine the effects of income inequality on adolescent gambling, concluding that wealth distribution may have an impact on youth gambling. Gender issues were raised with the study from Huic et al. focusing on gambling predictors of adolescent girls who are a much less studied population than boys. Furthermore, empirical findings from Nigro et al. with regard to different emotional and cognitive factors confirmed the impact of impulsivity and emotional distress on the development of youth problem gambling. Last but not least, Donati et al. addressed mindware problems (i.e., cognitive distortions) and their influence both on youth gambling as well as the conception of theoretically founded preventive interventions.

In addition, four papers shed light on specific risk constellations for the development and manifestation of gambling-related problems in adulthood. Based on representative data from Austria, Buth et al. tackled the question of whether certain risk factors are equally relevant for at-risk, problem, and disordered gamblers. Overall, their findings indicated that the included risk factors indeed differ between these gambling groups, suggesting the need for more tailored prevention and treatment strategies. In contrast to this approach, the study by Hing et al. aimed at identifying risk factors for three forms of problematic online gambling [i.e., electronic gaming machines (EGMs), sports betting, race betting]. While the risk profiles of online sports bettors and race bettors were largely similar, a rather different pattern emerged for online EGM gamblers pointing again to the importance of differential activities in terms of prevention and intervention. Unique findings also stem from Olason et al. who conducted a population-based follow-up study in order to determine the impact of the economic crisis in Iceland on gambling behavior. Interestingly, past year problematic gambling figures did not change after the economic collapse. However, an increased participation in lotto and scratch tickets indicates that gambling forms with low initial stakes and large jackpots may then become more enticing, in particular for individuals suffering financial difficulties. In a very well-balanced opinion paper Zakiniaeiz et al. finally recalled the necessity to study gender differences in gambling patterns, especially with regard to preferred gambling forms, the onset of disordered gambling, co-occurring disorders and disorder progression.

Another important area in gambling research relates to measurement issues. In particular, the reliable and valid assessment of problem gambling patterns has received a considerable amount of attention for both adolescents ( Edgren et al., 2016 ) and adults ( Pickering et al., 2018 ). Five papers deal with the psychometric properties of novel measurement tools. Against the background that large-scale prevalence studies consistently represent high prevalence rates of gambling participation among youth (see above), two papers directly focus on this age cohort. While Stinchfield et al. developed and evaluated the psychometric properties of the Brief Adolescent Gambling Screen (BAGS), a three-item screen for adolescent problem gambling, Donati et al. tested the gender invariance of their Gambling Behavior Scale for Adolescents (GBS-A) applying item response theory. New tools that broadly aim at determining risk and protective factors associated with problem gambling in adults were also introduced. For example, Barbaranelli et al. reported the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Gambling Self-Efficacy Scale (MGSES), an innovative scale to measure self-efficacy as a protective factor for problem gambling. In addition, Cowie et al. provided preliminary evidence for the predictive validity of the Gambling Cognitions Inventory (GCI) as a measure of cognitive distortions, showing its relationship to several gambling outcomes over a 1-month and a 6-month time period, respectively. In a similar vein, Jonsson et al. assessed the capacity of the different dimensions of the Jonsson-Abbott Scale (JAS) to predict increases in problem gambling risk levels as well as the onset of problem gambling over 1 year.

The final main subject of interest relates to clinical examinations of problem gambling. Researchers and treatment providers have sought to identify the underlying issues associated with problem gambling and have tried to identify both the barriers preventing individuals for seeking help and best practices in working with individuals with this disorder. Five informative papers have looked at this issue from multiple perspectives. Challet-Bouju et al. provided a systematic review of cognitive interventions highlighting that this common form of intervention represents a promising approach to gambling disorder management while Tremblay et al. documented the experiences of gamblers and their partners either individually or in couple therapy. Their conclusion was that both forms of treatment were effective but more positive experiences emerged for couple therapy. In yet another interesting paper, Gavriel-Fried and Rabayov examined the importance of self-stigma for individuals seeking treatment for gambling, alcohol or other substance use problems. They summarized that stigma among individuals with gambling problems tend to work in a similar way as among those individuals with an alcohol or drug problem. Jiménez-Murcia et al. analyzed the frequency of the co-occurrence of gambling disorders and food addiction. Their findings suggest that almost 10% of individuals having a gambling disorder concurrently experienced a food addiction. In addition, a far higher ratio of food addiction was found in women. Lastly, Giroux et al. provided a systematic review of online and mobile interventions for problem gambling, alcohol and drug use. While this may prove promising in the future, more rigorous research is necessary before definite conclusions can be reached. In sum, more research is clearly needed in understanding gambling disorders or problem gambling patterns before best practice treatment approaches can be identified. Clinicians and treatment providers are well aware that problem gamblers do not represent a homogenous group ( Blaszczynski and Nower, 2002 ) and that differential approaches may be required.

Overall, 94 different authors from 15 countries contributed to this special issue. We remain confident that these 18 papers significantly add to the understanding of problem gambling and will further stimulate high-quality gambling research in its many facets.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: gambling, problem gambling, adolescence, measurement, risk factors, prevention, treatment

Citation: Hayer T, Primi C, Ricijas N, Olason DT and Derevensky JL (2018) Editorial: Problem Gambling: Summarizing Research Findings and Defining New Horizons. Front. Psychol . 9:1670. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01670

Received: 13 August 2018; Accepted: 20 August 2018; Published: 06 September 2018.

Copyright © 2018 Hayer, Primi, Ricijas, Olason and Derevensky. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Tobias Hayer, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 22 August 2017

Why do young adults gamble online? A qualitative study of motivations to transition from social casino games to online gambling

• Hyoun S. Kim 1 ,
• Michael J. A. Wohl 2 ,
• Rina Gupta 3 &
• Jeffrey L. Derevensky 4  

Asian Journal of Gambling Issues and Public Health volume  7 , Article number:  6 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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The present research examined the mechanisms of initiating online gambling among young adults. Of particular interest was whether social casino gaming was noted as part of young adults’ experience with online gambling. This is because there is growing concern that social casino gaming may be a ‘gateway’ to online gambling. Three focus groups ( N  = 21) were conducted with young adult online gamblers from two large Canadian Universities. Participants noted the role of peer influence as well as incentives (e.g., sign up bonuses) as important factors that motivated them to start engaging in online gambling. Participants also noted a link between social casino games and online gambling. Specifically, several young adults reported migrating to online gambling within a relatively short period after engaging with social casino games. Potential mechanisms that may lead to the migration from social casino games to online gambling included the role of advertisements and the inflated pay out rates on these free to play gambling like games. The results suggest initiatives to prevent the development of disordered gambling should understand the potential of social casino gaming to act as a gateway to online gambling, especially amongst this vulnerable population.

Over the past decade, the use of computers and the Internet has significantly altered the gambling landscape. The gambling industry is no longer bound by brick and mortar gambling venues (e.g., casinos, racetracks). Today, access to gambling activities can be achieved with a few keystrokes on a computer. One point of access that has gained increased attention from researchers in the field of gambling studies is social media sites such as Facebook (Wohl et al. 2017 ). In part, this increased attention is because social media sites have become a popular platform for people to access online gambling venues via hyperlinks embedded in advertisements (Abarbanel et al. 2016 ). Social media sites also allow users to engage in free-to-play simulated gambling games through applications. These free-to-play simulated gambling games have become referred to as social casino games (Gainsbury et al. 2014 ). There is evidence to suggest, however, that social casino game play may act as a ‘gateway’ to gambling for real money (for a review see Wohl et al. 2017 ).

The current research took a qualitative approach to assess young adult online gamblers experiences with online gambling to determine the process and mechanisms that may lead young adults to gamble online, including the role of social casino games. In other words, the present research aimed to examine the motivations for gambling online, including transitioning from social casino games to online gambling. A focus was placed on young adults’ experience with online gambling due to their propensity to gamble online (McBride and Derevensky 2009 ), play social casino games (Derevensky and Gainsbury 2016 ), as well as their elevated rates of disordered gambling (Welte et al. 2011 ). Further, social casino games were the focus as there is a current need to understand the issues regarding the gaming-social media crossover.

Online gambling and social casino gambling among young adults

The Internet has changed the way people engage in many activities, including gambling. Online gambling (compared with land-based gambling) provides players with ease of access, 24/7 accessibility, and confidentiality—all within the comfort of a person’s home. This ease of access has been flagged as a potential concern among researchers, regulators, and policy makers alike (Gainsbury 2015 ; Gainsbury and Wood 2011 ; Räsänen et al. 2013 ). Specifically, online gambling is often framed as a ‘risky’ form of gambling that may heighten the risk of developing a gambling disorder (Gainsbury et al. 2015b ; Griffiths et al. 2009 ; McBride and Derevensky 2009 ; Olason et al. 2011 ; Wood et al. 2007 ). In this light, it may be informative to examine factors that propel young adults to gamble online, including the link between social casino gaming and online gambling. This is because there is increasing evidence of the role played by social casino games in precipitating online gambling (Wohl et al. 2017 ) and young adults are increasingly exposed to social casino games (Kim et al. 2016 ).

Social casino games are an immensely popular form of entertainment, with millions of users playing in any given day (Derevensky and Gainsbury 2016 ; Martin 2014 ). One reason for their popularity may be their ubiquity on social network sites like Facebook , which provide ample opportunities to play social casino games via embedded apps (Gainsbury et al. 2014 ). Moreover, social casino games are among the most heavily advertised products on social network sites and convey the activity (i.e., gambling) as positive and glamorous (Gainsbury et al. 2015a ). These advertisements appear to have a significant influence on engagement with social casino games (SuperData 2016 ). It should be noted that some social casino games are now owned by online gambling operators who advertise their online gambling site within the social casino game, thus easing migration from social casino gaming to online gambling (Schneider 2012 ).

There is now converging evidence that suggests social casino gamers migrate to online gambling (Gainsbury et al. 2016 ; Kim et al. 2015 ). Furthermore, amongst people who engage in both gambling and social casino gaming, social casino games directly increase future gambling behaviors (Gainsbury et al. 2016 , 2017 ; Hollingshead et al. 2016 ). Social casino games are also popular among adolescents and young adults. In a large Canadian survey of over 10,000 students, roughly 9% reported having played social casino games (Elton-Marshall et al. 2016 ). In addition, a recent longitudinal study in a large sample of adolescents found that social casino games significantly predicted the transition to real money gambling (Dussault et al., in press). Providing further support for the popularity of social casino games, in focus groups with university students who were social media users, all participants reported being aware of the ample opportunities to play social casino games on Facebook, thus speaking to the increased exposure of these games on social networking sites (Kim et al. 2016 ).

Motivations for transitioning to online gambling from social casino gaming

Social casino games are popular among adolescents and young adults and may influence the transition to online gambling. Yet, researchers have paid little attention to potential processes or mechanisms that influences the transition to online gambling amongst this cohort, including the role played by social casino games. With that said, Hollingshead et al. ( 2016 ) argued that the motivations for playing social casino games likely mimic those of online gambling, including for excitement, to relieve boredom, and social motivations. In addition, they reported that some social casino gamers are motivated to engage in these games to hone their skills before playing for real money on online gambling sites. In line with Hollingshead et al. ( 2016 ) and King and Delfabbro ( 2016 ) proposed a framework for understanding factors that may increase or decrease the link between social casino gaming and online gambling among adolescents. Specifically, in their two pathways model, they identify both protective (e.g., early losses, awareness of risks, boredom) and risk factors (e.g., peer pressure, early big wins, greater confidence of winning) that may lead adolescents who are exposed to social casino games to either be disinterested in gambling or to increase future gambling behaviors.

The present research sought to add to the growing literature on the potential link between social casino gaming and online gambling. To do so, focus groups with young adult online gamblers were conducted to explore their motivations for gambling online, including the potential role social casino games played in initiating or facilitating online gambling behaviors. Focus groups provide a compromise between obtaining personal experiences without having to interview people individually, while also having a group environment where other people’s experience stimulate the recall and views of others. In this light, focus groups are an effective method of obtaining a variety of detailed information in an exploratory way.

Participants

Twenty-one young adults (18 males, 3 females) were recruited from two large Canadian Universities to participate in one of three focus groups described as being about young adults’ experience with online gambling. Specifically, the study was advertised as a focus group for people who gambling online. It was explained that we were interested in online gamblers’ “opinions and experiences regarding online gambling”.

The inclusion criteria were as follows: college students aged 18–24 years who reported gambling online at least twice per month. The method of recruitment occurred in two ways. First, all incoming first year students at one of the large Canadian universities complete a short survey screening for disordered gambling. Embedded in that questionnaire were items that assessed online gambling. This allowed us to recruit participants who met the inclusion criteria for the focus groups. Only those who consented to be recruited for future studies were contacted. The second method of recruitment consisted of visiting large classrooms and advertising the study at both universities.

While every effort was made to recruit an equal number of male and female online gamblers we were unable to do so despite our best efforts. Moreover, seven individuals who had initially agreed to participate in the study subsequently notified the research team before the group meeting that they could not participate for logistical reasons (i.e., work and school commitments, unexpected appointments). Participants in the first group were compensated $20 for their time and those in the remaining two groups were provided with $40 (the increased compensation was used as an incentive to attract a greater number of participants and was cleared by the authors’ Research Ethics Board). Additionally, participants were provided food and beverages throughout the course of the discussions that ensued.

Procedure and materials

All participants were provided with a description of the study objectives and were asked to read and sign an informed consent prior to participating in the current research. Participants were informed they were free to terminate participation at any time without penalty. Thereafter, participants were asked to complete a short background questionnaire, which included demographic information (gender, age), frequency of gambling, and how knowledgeable they believe themselves to be on the topic of online gambling.

A series of open-ended questions were asked of the group as part of a larger project assessing online gambling among young adults. For the present research, two open-ended questions were of importance. The first examined general factors that lead young adults to gamble online, “I’d like to gain a better understanding of the things that lead to online gambling in the first place. Based on what you know, what are the factors, the events, or the influences that result in a young person deciding to bet money on gambling activities online?” The second assessed the social casino game-online gambling link including the potential mechanisms, “You know that social media sites have gambling-type games such as Texas-Hold’em or Sloto-mania. In your opinion, do you think experience with these games leads a person to seek online gambling sites? In other words, do these types of games serve as a form of initiation to gambling online with real money?”

A licensed clinical psychologist trained in conducting focus groups led the discussions accompanied by two note-takers. Each group was approximately 60–75 min in duration and discussions were conducted at two Canadian universities. Two recording devices recorded the focus group to ensure no loss of data. Upon the completion of the focus groups, the discussions were subsequently transcribed by a professional coder and coded by two independent reviewers. The initial categories generated by the data were highly consistent between the two raters with regards to general themes and number of categories. The data was reviewed two additional times to arrive at a consensus when disagreements between raters were noted. Categorical names were arrived through consensus after discussion between raters. NVivo 10 qualitative research software for qualitative analyses was used to organize and quantify the data.

With respect to frequency of online gambling, 52% of individuals indicated gambling less than once per week, while 48% indicated gambling at least once per week or several times per week. Seventy-six percent of individuals indicated gambling more frequently and/or for longer periods of time than intended (61.9% occasionally; 14.4% often). Participants were asked to indicate on a 7-point Likert scale how knowledgeable they perceived themselves to be on the topic of online gambling. The overall mean score was 4.38. The majority of the sample (85.7%) indicated that they tend to play on one or two online gambling sites, whereas 14.3% stated they like to experiment with different sites. Importantly, more than half (62%) of the participants revealed playing social casino games (e.g., Texas Hold’em ) on Facebook or on other platforms. Of the participants ( n  = 3) who spontaneously reported having transitioned from playing for fun to online gambling, they did so in relatively short period of time. One participant reported transitioning after only two weeks, while another stated having moved to real money gambling after a couple of months.

General factors leading to online gambling

Several themes emerged in regards to the factors that led the emerging adults to online gambling. For example, some of the emerging adults in the focus groups stated that friends played an important role in their initial participation to online gambling. Specifically, several participants reported having first learned to gamble with friends and thereafter transitioning to online gambling as their friends were not always available.

From my personal experience for example, I started gambling online with poker because I started playing poker with friends, and that is how I got to gambling online… with friends they did not always have the time [to play poker]. Gambling online was just easier – with friends they did not always have time.

Another theme that was noted in the precipitation of online gambling was the incentives (e.g., sign up bonuses) offered by online gambling. The young adult online gamblers noted that the first time they gambled online was when they were offered bonuses and free credits. Indeed, the participants agreed that the bonuses were an important incentive in moving to online gambling.

The bonuses actually attract us to them. You don’t get that at the casino.

For me the first incentive was they offered us 10 lb… so I got the 10 lb and then started betting real money

Motivations from transitioning from social casino games to online gambling

Texas Hold’em with free chips, that’s how I started. A general progression starts with these Facebook entertainment games which are purely for fun and some people take it to the next level where it’s for fun and money, that’s where we are now - most of us and then some people will take it eventually to the next level where the fun has disappeared and they are just doing it for the money.

Social casino games were noted as a potential factor that influenced the initiation of online gambling among young adults. In fact, whilst the moderator had intentions to bring up social casino games as a topic, in all three focus groups, the young adult online gamblers spontaneously brought up social casino games. These results indicate that social casino games are a salient aspect of young adult online gamblers’ experiences. Not surprisingly, the young adult online gamblers mentioned the constant advertisements as a potential factor that may lead social casino gamers to online gambling. Specifically, the frequent nature of the advertisements that provided social media users with an opportunity was brought up by several focus group members, with few young adult online gamblers mentioned the role of advertisement in the transition to online gambling.

I’d argue that you are just sort of lured into playing more through back link advertising where you will have all these ads like partypoker.com keep coming back at you even when you are on other sites…

… and obviously the companies [social media] give out the information on things that you are doing like all the games and poker, even though it’s not for money. Your side bar has all advertisements that are personalized to you so for me I see a lot of gambling, sports, apparel stuff and stuff like that is all on my side bar.

When I started, it was Facebook. Randomly the opportunity comes up with ads. I was stressed so I went to the online casino from Facebook. Every day, every day, the online casino sends you notifications…

The young adult online gamblers also noted a link between social casino games and online gambling, with several participants stating they transitioned to online gambling after playing for free on Facebook. One potential implication is the inflated payout rate offered by social casino games. The focus group members noted they win more frequently on social casino games, which provides them a sense of hope that they would be winning money had they been gambling for real. There was a general sense of needing to be “smart” and “savvy” to not fall prey to the tactics of online casinos and social media sites.

Once you play for fun, they sort of get people into the gambling, you think ok, this would be great if it were real money, so you try. That’s the way the websites make you go through that road.

They want you to win… if you are winning on Facebook and then you see [an advertisement] on the side to go online to play at party poker you will think if I can do this for free I can do this for real and then you go to do it for real and the next thing you know you are down $150 when you were getting Blackjack with the other one [social casino site].

There was a consensus that social casino games provided an excellent learning opportunity. Specifically, social casino games allow people to learn rules, procedures, and strategies to gamble.

So regardless of whether it is Facebook or just the practice sites on the online casinos, it’s a natural progression to start from social casino games: train, learn… then you realize you are not learning enough because people are not taking the game seriously, and then you move onto paying.

I don’t know those procedures so I don’t play (in casinos). But online who is going to yell at you online? So like you can just practice online and you can play lower [limit] tables. Basically you can practice online without other people yelling at you.

Participants also noted that after playing for free, they transitioned to online in part as most players who play for free do not play the game the ‘right way’

The difference between a table with real money and a table with fake money, the people with fake money, they don’t do the moves they usually do with their real money. You just mess around, you don’t really care “Oh I’m all in” – it’s like you don’t care. But at the real tables everyone plays the way they want to play. You get to learn a lot when you play.

I started playing online and when I played online without money I realized this was not really like anywhere close to the situation you would be in at a real table cause you don’t have any money on it, so I decided to start gambling with money.

However, not everyone perceived a link between social casino games and online gambling. These individuals explained that the interfaces of the games were so different (social media being much less sophisticated) that people who are attracted to one would likely not be attracted to the other.

I don’t think it’s as dangerous as people make it to be. If I want to switch from gambling on Facebook to a real site I just go to Google and type in poker and have it [online site].

You start playing poker with your friends and like you move from that step onto other things. I don’t think you go from Facebook to gambling. I don’t see that as a gateway at all.

In today’s technological world, young adults are exposed to a plethora of opportunities to engage in gambling activities, including simulated gambling games on social media sites. For some young adults, exposure to gambling and gambling-like activities may result in the over-involvement of gambling. In three focus groups, motivations that influenced young adults to engage in online gambling were explored. The participants noted several factors that motivated them to engage in online gambling: including suggestions from friends, the ease and accessibility of online gambling (compared to land-based venues), and incentives offered by the online gambling operators (e.g., $10 in free play).

The results of our present research may have important implications for the progression and maintenance of online gambling among young adults. First, several participants reported having been drawn to online gambling by bonuses offered by the gambling operators. Whilst incentives may help attract new customers, it should be noted that they may not be creating frequent customers. Indeed, free-play offers (e.g., bonus offers) bring customers into a gambling venue, but fail to generate significant increases in volume of play (Lucas et al. 2005 ). Having said that, given that online gambling is often framed as a risky form of gambling, in part due to the increased accessibility, whether operators should be allowed to offer incentives, especially amongst vulnerable population may be an important question which policy makers should address.

In addition to general factors that may motivate young adults to engage in online gambling, potential mechanisms for the social casino games-online gambling link were explored. One potential mechanism noted by the participants that may lead to the migration of online gambling from social casino games involves the use of advertisements by the online gambling operators. Specifically, it was noted that gambling operators sometimes use social casino games to advertise gambling activities without legal restrictions because it is a game. Indeed, as social casino games are not technically gambling activities, there is no regulation in regards to advertisement, prompting some to suggest that advertisements for social casino games be held to the same standard as gambling (Gainsbury et al. 2014 ). It has been suggested that these advertisements are more likely to appear to young adults and adolescents (Abarbanel et al. 2016 ). Further, advertisements for gambling (including social casino games) are frequent on social media sites and portray the positive aspects of gambling without any of the potential dangers (Gainsbury et al. 2016 ). Some of the participants in the focus groups reported moving from social casino games to real money gambling due to the constant advertisements of online casinos. As young adults may be more likely to be influenced by advertisements (Derevensky et al. 2010 ), some researchers have suggested that advertisements for social casino games be held to the same standard as gambling (Derevensky and Gainsbury 2016 ). Our results seem to provide support for this suggestion.

A second mechanism by which players migrated from social casino games to online gambling was via the inflated payout rates on social casino games. Note this mechanism was also identified in the two pathways model proposed by King and Delfabbro ( 2016 ). Specifically, participants felt an increased confidence in winning should they have engaged in real-money gambling. Further, several participants stated that their frequent wins on social casino games propelled them to try engaging in online gambling. This is in line with previous research, which found that a portion of casino gamers play these games to build up their ‘skill’ before migrating to gambling in land-based or online gambling venues (see Kim et al. 2016 ). However, the inflated payout rates may give players an inflated belief in the skill, and, of course, there is no skill if the game of choice is one of pure-chance, like a slot machine. In fact, social casino game outcomes are not based on random odds and mathematics, but are rather designed to enhance player enjoyment (Wohl et al. 2017 ). Because of this, the social casino gamer wins more than he loses (Sévigny et al. 2005 ), which in turn, may falsely increase their confidence in winning, as proposed by King and Delfabbro ( 2016 ). Providing further support that frequent wins and perception of skills as a process by which social casino games to lead to online gambling, Hollingshead et al. ( 2016 ) showed that playing social casino games for skill purposes have been linked to problematic gambling behaviors. In this light, it would behoove regulators to enforce payout rates that are similar to gambling activities, or at very least mandate social casino gaming operators to inform players of that social casino games are not based on random odds as their gambling counterparts.

According to Blaszczynski and Nower’s ( 2002 ) pathways model of problem and pathological gambling, there are three distinct subgroups of gamblers, each with different pathways that manifest in problem gambling behaviors. In the model, the starting point is ecological factors, which include increased availability and accessibility. In this way, social casino games may influence the development of problem gambling among young adults by providing ease of access and increased availability. Indeed, one of the concerns of social casino games is that although they purport to have age verifications, a UK study found that 300,000 youths aged 11–16 reported having engaged in free online gambling games in the past week (Parke et al. 2013 ). Furthermore, it is plausible that if social casino games lead to the development of problem gambling, it does through Pathway 1, the behaviourally conditioned gambler. This pathway includes cognitive mechanisms such as irrational beliefs and illusion of control, which may manifest due to the inflated payout rates on social casino games. That said, this is an assertion and would be in need of empirical support.

Limitations

Some limitations of the current study should be noted. First, we did not recruit a sufficient number of female online gamblers to ascertain different trends and cognitions that may be gender-specific. That said, studies have consistently found that online gamblers tend to be young males (Griffiths et al. 2009 ; for a review see Gainsbury 2015 ). Thus, we have confidence that the observed results maintain ecological validity. Secondly, the findings of the current project are not intended to be reflective of the college population as a whole. Rather, the findings are qualitative in nature and should be used to guide future research initiatives. Lastly, we recruited online gamblers to participant in the focus groups, rather than social casino gamers. Thus, the current study cannot speak to social casino games being a deterrent to online gambling (e.g., knowing you can’t win).

The Internet has drastically shaped the way in which people engage with the world, including with gambling activities. Furthermore, social networking sites have become a fabric of the modern day world. While the Internet and specifically social networking sites are a great medium to stay connected with loved ones, they have increasingly become an avenue to engage in gambling activities, including simulated forms of gambling (i.e., social casino games). The present research explored the motivations that push young adults to engage in online gambling, including the role of social casino games. Further research and attention is needed in this domain to mitigate the potential migration from gaming to gambling, specifically amongst those most vulnerable.

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Kim, H.S., Wohl, M.J.A., Gupta, R. et al. Why do young adults gamble online? A qualitative study of motivations to transition from social casino games to online gambling. Asian J of Gambling Issues and Public Health 7 , 6 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40405-017-0025-4

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• Online gambling
• Adolescent gambling
• Social media
• Social casino games
• Focus groups
• Qualitative research

Gambling Research Paper

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Introduction

The development of sociological perspectives on gambling, current sociological perspectives on gambling, researching gambling in the 21st century, gambling and public policy, linkages with other sociological perspectives, conclusion: technology, change, and the future.

• Bibliography

The size and scope of legalized gambling—to put aside its illegal manifestations for a moment—are simply mind-boggling. In America, for instance, more money is legally spent on gambling than is spent on movie tickets, theme parks, sports events, and music events combined (Morais 2002). Of course, sociologists have spent a substantial amount of productive research time examining the vast sociocultural impacts of Hollywood’s movies, and the field has developed an impressively broad literature on the sociology of leisure and sport. Furthermore, sociologists of popular culture have studied the sociological reach of a music culture that today encompasses everything from Mozart to MTV.

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Meanwhile, the gambling industry now dwarfs these more familiar sociological subjects, at least in the economic sense. Gambling also constitutes a formidable political entity: As of this writing, 48 of the 50 U.S. states offer some form of legalized gambling (Utah and Hawaii stand as the lone holdouts). Just as strikingly, a somewhat similar proportion of international jurisdictions are also embracing legalized gambling (or considering doing so).

Of course, gambling activity has probably been around as long as human groups have been around (the phrase “rolling the bones” harkens back to an era when playing dice games meant exactly that). Nor are the activity’s intimate linkages with government new: In the United States, for instance, lotteries were legalized in the colonies by 1750. City governments, churches, jails, public utilities, road repair, and institutions of higher education, including many Ivy League schools, were financed by these lotteries (Rosecrance 1988).

However, at no time in human history have more types of gambling been more widely available to more human beings than they are today. In light of these observations, it would seem that sociologists everywhere might devote their tools to help advance our understanding of those of us who wager money on events whose outcomes are in doubt.

Some of the earliest writings on gambling were not specifically sociological, but they certainly invoked themes familiar to today’s sociologists. For instance, because gambling was seen as undermining the very foundations of the Protestant ethic, it threatened those who were passionately protective of the latter in predictable ways. In 1883, Anthony Comstock warned that “the promise of getting something for nothing, of making a fortune without the slow plodding of daily toil, is one of Satan’s most fascinating snares” (p. 56). For many, gambling’s insidiousness offended social and moral sensibilities more than other scourges of the day such as alcohol.

In his pioneering study, Edward Devereux (1949) lamented that sociologists had neglected the study of gambling, given its ubiquity and institutionalization. Devereux viewed gambling within the context of functionalist theory, suggesting that wagering behavior had societal implications beyond the individualistic and pathological approaches that seemed to dominate then—and indeed, continue to dominate studies of gambling behavior today. Given the sociological frameworks popular in his time, it was perhaps predictable that Devereux explored the act as a safety valve that relieved stress and strain generally emanating from the restraints and rationality of a capitalistic system. In addition, Devereux also felt that dominant values were reinforced with admonitions against gambling and other deviant behaviors (p. 946).

Of course, it was recognized that gambling can also be dysfunctional, as Bloch (1951) pointed out, creating problems for family, work, and personal life. Much of the early nonsociological work on gambling behavior focused on the dysfunctional effects that gambling has on both the gambler as well as those close to him or her. This perspective coalesced in the field of psychology into a vast literature exploring treatments for gambling pathologies. Even sociologists were not immune to this impulse: Herman’s (1967) study of racetrack betting used this more or less pathological framework for his analysis, as did Zola’s (1963) research on offtrack betting.

In the early days of the field, legalized gambling was rare, and illegal gambling was widespread. As such, many of the first studies of the gambling act tended to employ a more or less criminological framework to interpret these behaviors. For instance, Tec’s (1964) study of football betting in Sweden found that bettors were more likely to be employed, upwardly mobile, and motivated to achieve. They did not appear to be alienated or detached—contrary to what anomie theorists would predict. Other analysts presented evidence to support opportunity theory and anomie, demonstrating that those with available avenues of advancement and lower levels of status frustration were less likely to gamble (Li and Smith 1976). Studies by Light (1977) and Newman (1968) did not find that relative deprivation motivated gambling activity, particularly within the lower class. Instead, gambling was interpreted as a communal or shared activity with important cultural meanings. Downes et al. (1976) found that gambling was not peculiar to the lower class but was found across all categories of the social structure—that is, across racial, class, and occupational divides.

Not all studies of gambling focused on the financial “losers” who constitute the majority of gamblers. One interesting sociological research piece explored the familial, social, and professional changes confronted by lottery winners—a scenario that many of us have no doubt contemplated (Kaplan 1978). This was the first systematic study of gambling’s “winners”—all of whom had come away with a prize of one million dollars or more. In his work, Kaplan found that relationships transformed in significant and unforeseen ways, and that many winners found that they could not maintain their prior institutional or organizational affiliations.

Against this background, the sociologist Henry Lesieur’s work emerged as a pioneering contribution to our understanding of the ways in which social networks and communities affect gamblers’ lives. Lesieur (1977) sought sociological explanations for problem gambling in his groundbreaking study of the career of racetrack and sports bettors—a work that established him as a pioneer of this emerging area of sociological inquiry.

In fact, Lesieur’s work was so influential that despite his background as a sociologist, he was asked to play a central role in defining the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for pathological gambling (see American Psychiatric Association 1994). Lesieur observed that many problem gamblers found themselves entangled in an effort to try to win back losses—or “chasing”—a characteristic that has since served as a central feature of the diagnostic literature (Lesieur and Custer 1984:149–50; American Psychiatric Association 1994). Later, Lesieur served as the founding editor of the first specialty journal in the field, the Journal of Gambling Behavior, later renamed the Journal of Gambling Studies. Today, he is widely recognized in mental health circles as one of the founding figures in the field of pathological gambling studies.

The sociologists Smith and Abt (1984) argued for a shift from concern with the problematic aspects of gambling to a focus on understanding the activity as “play.” In their view, gambling reinforces capitalistic and materialistic American values of self-reliance, risk taking, decision making, and skill enhancement. Furthermore, much like other games, gambling provides an outlet for socialization and cultural learning: From marbles to baseball card flipping, games of chance prepare children for games at a higher level and for participation in American life.

As Goffman (1967) noted before Smith and Abt, character is demonstrated through rituals—including gambling rituals. Thus, gambling might be seen as functional for social order by providing an escape from everyday life while reinforcing existing cultural norms (Smith and Abt 1984; Abt, Smith, and McGurrin 1985:64.)

Today, gambling has “normalized” and may be understood via lenses currently used to study other late-emerging capitalist industries. Reith (2003) points out that

the gambling industry itself is increasingly owned by a limited number of multinational corporations, concentrated in an oligopolistic market. It is organized in a similar way to other major industries, with market research and advertising strategies designed to identify and target niche groups . . . Modern consumers have a variety of products and experiences to choose from, and an ever-larger and more powerful industry to supply them. (Pp. 19–20)

This “new” gaming industry has attracted a growing number of professional observers, primarily in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Most sociological perspectives have employed familiar tools of the field and applied them to our understanding of the spread of gambling. As the Australian sociologist Jan McMillen attests, gambling has not been exempt from trends commonly associated with the spread of globalization. McMillen (2003) points out that gambling has succumbed to

the homogenizing forces of globalization: economic dominance of transnational corporations, often American; the acceptance of certain governing rules and economic tendencies; and standardization of products and consumer behavior . . . this new globalization is a largely cultural phenomenon, whatever its economic base. Nowhere is this better seen than in the transformation of gambling into one of the world’s most rapidly expanding consumer activities. (P. 51)

More generally, it would seem that the development of the global tourism industry—one that, by many accounts, has evolved into the world’s largest—has provided the macro-economic backdrop for the development of a global gaming industry. And as this industry becomes a truly global one, scholars of the globalizing gaming industry— like scholars of globalization as a whole—might begin to focus on homogenizing forces as well as those forces that highlight local differences.

For instance, gambling locations in North America, Australia, and Europe are largely dominated by a relatively similar collection of machine games developed by a handful of multinational corporations. In a postindustrial “deforestation effect,” the overall portrait on the casino floor is one of machines replacing wooden tables, which are being hauled off to storage.

In Asia, meanwhile, these machine games have not proven as popular. In Asian casinos, these games are usually relegated to peripheral spaces within the gambling environment, as table-oriented games of chance predominate. Gamblers, for their part, “play” in an environment that is notably more serious than settings in Western societies. Were we to insist on a one-size-fits-all theoretical or methodological model for understanding such disparate sociocultural locales, our approaches might well prove to be deficient.

In some more-developed regions of the globalizing world, we are observing signs of a shift from social problems of deficiency to social problems of excess: for instance, starvation becomes less of a problem, only to be replaced by obesity. Both starvation and obesity, of course, are shaped by sociological as well as psychological and biological factors—as is certainly the case with gambling problems as well. In this context, it would seem that the “individual” problem we now call problem gambling may in fact be characterized as a quintessentially twenty-firstcentury “social problem”—one that is profoundly affected by macrolevel factors and that predictably involves an overindulgence (rather than an underindulgence).

Of course, professional views of those with gambling problems have not always been nuanced or multidimensional. For years, the experts who tackled the task of understanding and explaining the lives of those who “gambled too much” spoke from church pulpits (rather than academic podiums) and located the problem in morality. In a sermon delivered on April 19, 1835, Samuel Hopkins tells us exactly how we are to “treat” the problem gambler:

Let the gambler know that he is watched, and marked; and that, as a gambler, he is loathed. Let the man who dares to furnish a resort for the gambler know that he is counted a traitor to his duty, a murderer of all that is fair, and precious, and beloved among us. Let the voice of united, incensed remonstrance be heard— heard till the ears of the guilty tingle. (Pp. 17–18)

Unfortunately for problem gamblers, these kinds of historical perspectives have not been forgotten. This is why problem gamblers—who now are labeled by psychological institutions as “sick”—still self-diagnose as “evil” many years after these kinds of sermons were delivered.

This is a classic illustration of how a sociological imagination can help people understand the nuances of what “ails” them. A problem gambler might wonder, “If pathological gambling is a medical problem, then why is it that my friends treat me like a moral one?” The sociological answer is this: because the older religious interpretations of problem gamblers have generated far more momentum and power than the relatively youthful medical interpretations have. In the social battlefields of public discourse, 20 years or so of medical interpretations do not somehow magically eliminate the inertia of hundreds of years of influential religious interpretations. No matter how much we hail the recent advances of problem gambling science and medicine, they have not yet captured the public’s intellectual and emotional imagination in the way that earlier moral-religious understandings have (Bernhard, forthcoming-b).

In his book Pathological Gambling: The Making of a Medical Problem, Brian Castellani (2000) concludes that the field is careening carelessly down a decidedly medical pathway at the expense of more multidimensional perspectives. Drawing on the insights of Foucault, Castellani argues that medical experts have dominated the problem gambling discourse for too long and that it is time for those representing a wider range of discourses to be included in the construction of knowledge about this social problem. Castellani argues for an approach that explores how medical discourses collide with those emanating from moral or policy quarters. What remains to be seen is whether these kinds of sociological perspectives can contribute to the popular view of gambling in the way that moral and then psychological ones have.

The British sociologist Gerda Reith recently developed a thoughtful critique of the ways in which sociology should engage gambling as a subject of sociological inquiry. Noting that sociologists have long focused on the immorality or the sickness of those who gamble too much, Reith (2003) seeks instead to focus on the vast majority of gamblers who engage in gambling for recreation and fun.

In her work, Reith (2003) skillfully contemplates how an “age of chance” has emerged and engaged an age of reason. Long ago, of course, very little that occurred was attributed to mere chance—the gods, after all, controlled virtually every imaginable outcome. In the current context, chance has become accepted—and even commodified—by capitalist economies in the Western world. Looking to the future, Reith senses that a peculiar affection for chance will continue to develop, noting that “at the start of the twenty-first century, life does seem to be increasingly insecure,” citing market fluctuations, transformations in work life, environmental doomsday scenarios, and the postmodern grappling with truth and certitude as evidence (pp. 182–83). Against these sociological backdrops, Reith astutely notes that gambling serves as “a conduit for chance: an arena in which (chance) appears in an intensified and, more importantly, controlled form” (p. 183). Hence, gambling provides a unique outlet for the impulses that accompany this era. From this perspective, gambling seems less a deviant act than a distilled one: It serves as a microcosm for much that is characteristic of our times.

Methodologically, the field continues to grapple with a variety of issues that are common in many relatively young areas of inquiry. Summarizing the methodological state of the field, Eadington (2003) notes that “it remains difficult to fully comprehend what the evidence is telling us” (p. 32) and later argues that “benefit/cost analysis applied to . . . gaming activities is still a relatively primitive science, primarily because of the difficulties in conceptualizing, observing, and measuring social costs” (p. 46).

Notably, it is a sociologist, Rachel Volberg, who has served as the problem gambling field’s leading prevalence methodologist and researcher. Volberg (1996), whose tool of choice for determining problem gambling rates has been the telephone survey, nevertheless insists that multiple methods are preferable to any single one:

Many of the questions now being asked about gambling and problem gambling cannot be answered by single surveys . . . As we move forward, it will be important to use a variety of methods to provide insights that no single approach can yield. Since all scientific methods contain biases, multiple research techniques (including experimental, clinical, historical, ethnographic and survey approaches) are needed to resolve puzzles and discrepancies as well as to provide a much-needed depth of perception to the field of gambling studies. (P. 126)

Today, it appears that even the medically and psychologically oriented researchers in the field of gambling studies are embracing these broader approaches to theory and method. For instance, a group of influential scholars—all trained in psychology—recently put forth a call to embrace a more macrolevel “public health” approach to the study of gambling behavior. Interestingly, this public health approach strikes a chord familiar to sociologists, because it advocates multiple levels of analysis, including those that focus on the individual, group, organizational, and institutional levels (Blaszczynski, Ladouceur, and Shaffer 2004).

From a policy perspective, what makes gambling different from more conventional industries is the peculiar relationship between government entities and gambling businesses. As Eadington (2003) notes, “Gambling is one of the largest industries whose fundamental economic characteristics are substantially determined by political decisions” (p. 45). To this, we might add that state lotteries exist in a way that allows the government to sell products to its constituency directly and not via a generous tax break or other subsidy. Because of these relationships, government bodies may well find themselves with conflicting interests: On the one hand, they have an interest in maximizing gambling revenues (to sponsor government programs); on the other, they have an obligation to protect the public (some of whom may consume excessive amounts of lottery tickets).

In the United States, the government has been largely content to allow individual states to enforce and regulate gambling within their borders (Frey 1998). In other jurisdictions, national and provincial governments have entered into unique agreements with gaming business operators to offer gambling to native and tourist populations. In some cases, as with Canada, the government serves as a sort of “owner-operator” of casinos. As Rosecrance (1988) envisioned, gambling’s widespread acceptance and its partnership with public entities has resulted in its mainstreaming and legitimization—and also its decriminalization.

Recently, gambling has enjoyed unprecedented support from a wide variety of public figures. Especially in more conservative political environments, where uttering the “t word” (taxation) is a sure way to get voted out of office, gambling is often seen as a “voluntary tax” willingly donated to state coffers by participants, who in exchange for their donation receive an entertainment benefit.

At the same time, in jurisdictions across Canada and Australia, for instance, public clamor has resulted in growing efforts among government entities to mitigate the costs associated with this “entertainment.” Social movement organizations—most of which are affiliated with religious organizations in some manner—have once again emphasized the downside of gambling, and some jurisdictions have moved to address these critiques. To wit, the Canadian jurisdiction of Nova Scotia recently unveiled a test study of “responsible gaming devices” that have been attached to all gambling machines provincewide. These devices allow gamblers to check the amount of money they have won or lost over given periods of time (a sort of gambling “bank statement”) as well as set monetary limits and/or time limits for their play.

With each technological leap forward, however, we must also be on guard against falling into traps that some of sociology’s most famous voices have articulated. Bernhard and Preston (2004) point out that these policy interventions have a way of backfiring, as Robert Merton famously warned. As it turns out, several of the policies implemented in an effort to mitigate problem gambling have had unintended consequences, and a few have actually harmed those whom the policies ostensibly target. For instance, some jurisdictions have slowed down the speed of machine gambling games (thinking that this would help slow down the progression of gambling addicts), but research emerged that suggested that addicts actually played for longer periods of time when this policy was implemented. It would seem that in the twenty-first century, sociologists may well continue to rest their analyses on the able shoulders of the field’s twentieth-century giants.

Some of sociology’s favorite tools and perspectives can help illuminate a variety of aspects of gambling behavior. Robert Putnam’s (2000) popular work Bowling Alone, for instance, argues that many of our recreational activities have become decidedly less social over the past few generations. Putnam’s fundamental argument is that Americans are engaging in fewer social activities than in the past, and that this reduction in “social capital” can have potentially deleterious—even disastrous—consequences. Most germane to our discussion, in developing his argument, Putnam laments the decline of traditional game playing (such as bridge games) and the expansion of machine-based gambling:

Substitutes for card playing have emerged, of course, everything from computer and video games to casino gambling. Like cards, these pastimes provide the spice of chance. Unlike card playing, however, these successors are distinguished by their solitary nature . My informal observation of Internetbased bridge games suggests that electronic players are focused entirely on the game itself, with very little social small talk, unlike traditional card games. Even fanatics of Microsoft Solitaire rarely play in a group, and any visitor to the new megacasinos that dot the land has chilling memories of acres of lonely “players” hunched in silence over onearmed bandits. Bridge, poker, gin rummy, and canasta are not being replaced by some equally “schmoozable” leisuretime activity. (Pp. 104–105)

For Putnam, the recent gambling mania is symptomatic of far larger social ills. Beyond Putnam’s perspectives, there is much that is sociologically rich about the “social capital” (or lack thereof) of problem gamblers. For many problem gamblers, earlier in their “career,” gambling activity was decidedly unproblematic and heavily social—a way to socialize and enjoy and evening with friends. Later in their career, many problem gamblers find themselves gambling in social situations less often and gambling alone more often. By the time they reach what the 12-step groups call “bottom,” very few are gambling with anyone else— their social capital, it seems, has been reduced to nearly zero. Interestingly, their “recovery” embraces a dramatic reversal of this trend: Many turn to organized groups (such as professional therapy groups or Gamblers Anonymous) and reconnect with social worlds that they had abandoned. Whereas once they gambled alone, they eventually heal together (Bernhard, forthcoming-a).

For sociologists, obviously, group life has long been accepted as a foundational element of sociological inquiry. For gamblers with problems, an enhanced understanding of the nature and power of group life can perhaps deliver what Mills’s (1959) sociological imagination once promised. As Bernhard (forthcoming-b) argues, gamblers with problems can recognize, as all of us can, that “individual” problems can in fact be better understood by exploring the sociological backdrops on which they are projected.

Other books that are familiar to sociologists touch on gambling as well. The cultural critic Neil Postman (1985) begins his seminal work Amusing Ourselves to Death by talking about the American “city symbols” that captured the essence of a variety of periods—Boston in the colonial days, for instance, or New York in the Ellis Island immigration era. In this work, which is remarkable for how well it continues to resonate 20 years later, Postman suggests that in our current age, the ultimate city-symbol of the times may well be found in Las Vegas. For Postman, this is not necessarily a positive development:

For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Out politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts on show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death. (Pp. 3–4)

Following Postman’s lead, other analysts engaged in research that might be called a “sociology of Las Vegas.” The work of Gottdiener, Collins, and Dickens (1999) presents an urban sociological perspective on Las Vegas—one that emphasizes the need to understand what might be called the first postindustrial city. After all, unlike Detroit or Pittsburgh, Las Vegas produces little that is physical in nature. Instead, the city “produces” experience for the nearly 40 million people who visit it annually.

Drawing on the sociospatial approach, these authors continue by arguing that we have seen a “Las Vegasization” of the rest of America and a simultaneous “Americanization” or “normalization” of Las Vegas. This convergence effect means that Las Vegas is no longer the deviant case study it once was—in fact, quite the contrary, it may well be a model laboratory for urban sociological inquiry.

The sociological study of gambling also shares affinities with the sociological study of “risk” (see, e.g., Frey 1991). Risk is a cultural construct that is shaped by the perceptions and evaluations of risk that individuals and societies assign to certain activities (including, presumably, gambling). More recently, some scholars have used this framework to better understand gambling’s effects on societies. Invoking the term “risk society,” Kingma (2004) observes that the liberalization of gambling laws, the growing perception of gambling as a legitimate economic and recreational pursuit, and the subsequent development of mechanisms to deal with gambling addiction are natural outcomes of the modernization process.

Risk analysis may well provide us with a framework for understanding the pros and cons of a variety of social influences. Social processes, as Short (1984) notes, have benefits as well as negative impacts on the “social fabric” (Giddens 1990, meanwhile, focuses on the term social order in his analysis). Wildavsky (1988) claims that risk is inherent in all activities, and seeking a “zero-risk” society—where all is safe and secure—leads only to stagnation.

Thus, as with all development, opportunities arise in some sectors, but costs too rear their heads. In policy and social research contexts, this means that gambling’s potential benefits as a recreational, employment, and economic resource must be considered against the potential costs of addiction, crime, and personal/familial disruption. Risk management is the exercise of alerting individuals and societies to these adverse conditions (Short 1984).

Finally, gambling as risk was also examined by Erving Goffman (1967), who actually assumed the role of a dealer for several months in a Las Vegas casino. He was not studying gambling per se but rather used the gambling setting to study patterns of social interaction. Goffman was interested in the choice individuals made to place themselves in settings where there was personal or property risk at stake. In these settings, individuals seek “action,” pursuing risky activities even when the risk is avoidable. Later, Frey (1984) applied this concept to gambling: “Action activities are consequential and fateful in that something of value can be won or lost on the outcome, and, by committing something of value, players indicate their seriousness. The greater the consequences, the more fateful the enterprise becomes” (p. 113).

Like so many forces that ensnare our sociological attention, technology will certainly continue to shape gambling activities in the twenty-first century. Already, a variety of newer technologies can double as a gambling device, including cell phones and computers. In the United States, attorneys for the Bush administration have decided that Internet wagering is illegal under the 1961 Wire Act, which prohibited phone bets that took place across state lines. Of course, the Internet is more amorphous than the phone lines of the 1960s were, revealing the complexities inherent in regulating and monitoring acts that take place in virtual rather than brick-andmortar worlds. Despite this presidential interpretation, millions of Americans (and many more bettors internationally) wager billions of dollars on sites that operate in jurisdictions that allow operators to flourish. Few Internet gamblers, it is safe to say, are fully aware of the legal status of the act—an oversight that is understandable, perhaps, given the widespread and increasing acceptance of gambling in general.

Other familiar technologies will also continue to shape the gambling landscape. Television has recently wielded its powerful cultural force, contributing significantly to the gambling boom by televising events such as celebrity poker and an ever-growing number of fictional and reality tales set in Las Vegas. With all this sociological momentum, it is difficult to envision a twenty-first century in which gambling becomes increasingly less important as a sociological force.

In closing, however, we should note that the history of gambling is hardly a tale of linear expansion: The activity has experienced spikes in popularity as well as occasional bouts with prohibition. To wit, even the state of Nevada has legalized gambling on three separate occasions (and banned it twice). When it comes to gambling, if we take the long sociological view, it seems prudent to bet on both growth and backlash as we look ahead to the twenty-first century.

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Towards an Active Role of Financial Institutions in Preventing Problem Gambling: A Proposed Conceptual Framework and Taxonomy of Financial Wellbeing Indicators

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• Published: 20 May 2024

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• Nathan Lakew   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6490-1014 1 ,
• Jakob Jonsson 1 &
• Philip Lindner 1 , 2  

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The transformation of gambling into a largely digital commodity has created a need for online payment technologies to facilitate online gambling, thereby also raising the question of what role these actors can play in the promotion of Responsible Gambling (RG). With the means and access they maintain, financial institutions are in a unique position to alleviate financial pitfalls, yet their role in the gambling context has thus far received little scrutiny. The objective of this study was to conduct an extant literature review to develop an initial set of financial indicators tailored for financial institutions, enabling them to engage in the RG initiatives. We conducted a two-step narrative literature review to identify both general Financial Well-Being (FWB) indicators across financial research disciplines, and one specific to gambling. A literature search over the past 20 years was performed across the following academic databases: Medline (Ovid), Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest), Web of Science (Clarivate), and PsycInfo (EBSCO). Manifest content analysis was used in step one to review general financial well-being, yielding a general FWB conceptual framework. In step two, we applied latent content analysis to the gambling-specific literature, linking essential concepts of gambling-related financial harms to the broader FWB literature. This resulted in a tentative taxonomy of indicators applicable to financial institutions with gambling customers. In tandem with the FWB conceptual framework, the preliminary taxonomy could provide a foundation for financial institutions catering to gambling customers to engage in the duty of care agenda, potentially broadening player protection beyond the current operator-focused RG measures.

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Introduction

Gambling disorder is unique among addictive disorders in that financial harm is a direct rather than indirect consequence, which often has a life-changing impact including psychological stress and even involvement in criminal activities (Langham et al., 2016 ; Li et al., 2017 ; Muggleton et al., 2021 ). Any large-scale gambling operation requires a financial institution to facilitate the transfer of money from (and to a lesser extent, to) customers. However, the role of financial institutions in preventing problem gambling (in addition to e.g. money laundering) has received little research attention (Swanton et al., 2019 ). This is striking, given the pace at which online gambling operators have integrated Financial technologies (Fintech) into the online gambling setting (Gainsbury & Blaszczynski, 2020 ; Nisbet, 2005 ). Fintech is now the preferred way to facilitate deposit and win withdrawals in online gambling, providing consumers with means to directly connect to their bank accounts – thereby enabling “access to uninterrupted funds” at one’s fingertips (Schüll, 2012 ).

The association between harmful gambling and financial difficulties is well established (Gainsbury, 2011 ; Muggleton et al., 2021 ; Swanton et al., 2019 ), however, for various reasons, there is a dearth of research on how financial institutions can potentially play a positive role in the financial state of their gambling customers. First, there seems to be a consensus in financial sectors that consumers are individually responsible for the outcome of their financial well-being (FWB) (Kempson et al., 2013 ). This mirrors the historical predominance of RG tools primarily targeting individuals or gambling operators (Adams, 2013 ; Harris & Griffiths, 2018 ). In addition, there is a lack of comprehensive framework outlining potential strategies for financial institutions to mitigate financial harm associated with gambling in their capacity as financial service providers (Swanton et al., 2019 ). The scarce research on conceptualizing how to onboard financial institutions to promote RG agenda is arguably a significant contributing factor that policymakers have historically been skeptical about mandating these institutions to play a positive role in the gambling context (Lakew, 2022 ).

Financial harms resulting from gambling activities share similarities with the financial difficulties one can experience that ultimately affect overall FWB. For instance, research shows that the first sign of gambling-related financial harm is the inability to fund “surplus purchases” such as holidays (Langham et al., 2016 ). Similarly, the loss of “financial freedom to enjoy life” is often cited in the general financial literature as the first manifestation of the FWB problems (Brüggen et al., 2017 ). Such overlaps suggest that the theoretical frameworks and models that are well-established in the financial research field can potentially provide a framework for how financial institutions can participate in promoting FWB among their gambling customers.

The purpose of the current study was to identify FWB concepts, frameworks, and indicators across the financial research domain and examine their potential relevance to studies on gambling-related financial harm. To achieve this objective, a narrative literature review was conducted in two stages. First, we performed a literature review encompassing discussions on general FWB across various research domains. This was followed by a review of FWB-related discussions within gambling field research to thematize existing financial indicators of gambling research within the broader FWB discourse. Drawing from the results, the study concludes by by examining the implications for policymaking, the discourse surrounding responsibility in fostering a healthy gambling environment, incentives for engagement in such initiatives, and delineating potential future research directions for financial institutions operating within the gambling context.

This study employs a narrative review methodology. Narrative reviews are particularly useful when ‘one aims to link different research domains on the same topic, either for reinterpretation or interconnection’, and inspiration of new research ideas (Baumeister & Leary, 1997 ). Given that the present research aims to synthesize and reuse constructs within a specific knowledge area across different fields, the study design offers a suitable platform to accomplish our goal, namely conceptualizing a potential pathway for financial institutions serving gambling customers to engage in the RG agenda (Cronin et al., 2008 ). The narrative review was conducted in a two-step process. First, we identify the general concept of FWB and financial health indicators across myriads of research fields with two specific purposes: (1) to identify and categorize general FWB determinates; (2) to examine how these indicators and determinates are implemented to evaluate one’s financial health. The result of this analysis yielded a conceptual framework of FWB determinates and their indicators. In the second step, together with the conceptual framework, we investigated gambling-related financial harm literature using deductive-oriented latent content analysis to thematize FWB indicators into a gambling context. The second step results in a tentative taxonomy of FWB determinates alongside their indicators and manifestations in customer transactional data in the context of gambling activities.

Search Strategy and Selection Criteria

A literature search was performed in the following databases: Medline (Ovid), Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest), Web of Science (Clarivate), and PsycInfo (EBSCO) with the last search conducted on 2022–11-22. The search strategy was developed initially on the Web of Science database, which was then translated into search terms for the other databases. No language restriction was applied. De-duplication was done using the method described by Bramer et al. ( 2016 ). One final, extra step was added to compare DOIs. The full search strategies and results of steps one and two for all databases are available in the appendix.

For the first step of the general financial wellbeing review, the academic literature was searched using the following keywords: financial wellbeing; financ*; spending behavior; financial behavior; payment data behaviors; transaction data behavior; financial wellbeing capabilities. Articles relevant to FWB measurement indicators, manifestation of financial behaviors in transactional data, and components of FWB were selected for full-text review. Articles that were published more than 20 years ago, or had no available full text, were excluded from review. An environmental scan that focuses on financial institutions’ consumer financial health capability indicators was conducted to supplement the peer-reviewed journals. Figure  1 illustrates the literature selection process for step one.

Step one literature selection process

In the second step of the review, manifestations of financial harms in the context of gambling were searched using the following keywords: gambl*; payment behaviors; financial harm; financial institutions; and financial data. Among other things, articles with a focus on gambling-related financial harms, financial transaction data in the gambling context, and the association of harmful gambling with deposits or withdrawal behavior were selected for latent content analysis. Based on the selected article, a snowball search method was then applied to complement the search result of literature that focuses on financial institutions within the gambling context. Articles for which full text was not available were excluded from the review (See Fig.  2 ).

Step two literature selection process

Synthesis of the Result

The literature review analysis involved both manifest and latent content analysis. Manifest content analysis was applied to the general financial wellbeing literature review result. Usually labeled as the ‘first order value of a data’, a manifest approach focuses on describing what is visibly observable in the data (Cash & Snider, 2014 ). The approach allows researchers to develop themes of ideas, or common features of studies, prior to deductive theory-based analysis. We employ the following steps in conducting the manifest content analysis. First, we imported all deduplicated references into Rayyan collaborative software for abstract review. After the abstract-based selection, the second step involved an inductive full-text analysis of articles. Each article was taken as a unit of analysis. Inductive categories were developed by first labeling each article based on their subject focus per se (e.g., transaction data analysis), and later by overarching theme (e.g., FWB determinates). Finally, associations between the themes enabled us to develop a FWB conceptual framework.

In the second step, a similar initial approach (i.e., abstract selection using Rayyan) was followed to select the final gambling context articles that were included for consideration. With the conceptual framework from step one at hand, the second step employed a deductive categorization scheme to start building themes. In doing so, a latent content analysis was used to infer financial behavior exhibited by players concerning the FWB determinates identified in step one. The latent analysis involves a deeper examination of the text to extrapolate underlying meanings and infer the relationship aspect of the subject under investigation (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004 ). Each article, as a unit of analysis, was examined to identify players’ gambling indicators that can be manifested in transactional data available to financial institutions serving gambling providers. These indicators were, in turn, latently considered through the lens of the FWB conceptual framework to create clusters of FWB determinates in the gambling context. In addition, non-transactional determinates and indicators identified in the broader FWB literature (e.g., socio-demographic factors) were sought in the gambling literature to determine the contextual outcome of FWB in the gambling context. Step two latent analysis involved multiple iterations of re-reading the selected articles and ‘discursive alignment of interpretations’ when different judgments of interpretation about the categorization of indicators occurred among the researchers (Seuring & Gold, 2012 ).

Results and Discussion

Fwb in the financial literature.

In the domain of financial research, it is evident that the concept of financial well-being can be formulated based on various factors Table  1 . In their 25 years of bibliometric literature review of FWB, Singh and Malik ( 2022a ) found that the discussion of FWB clustered around (1) the conceptualization and antecedents of FWB (2) the relationship between financial literacy and FWB, and (3) the consequences of FWB such as financial satisfaction. Furthermore, most of the studies were found to focus on identifying financial determinates and indicators associated with the FWB cluster(s) of the subject of these studies. The authors have additionally identified studies that focus on the development of metrics for determinates such as financial literacy or overall financial satisfaction.

The work of Joo and Grable ( 2004 ), for example, aimed to develop financial satisfaction determinates, with demographic characteristics, financial stressors, individual behavior, and risk tolerance identified as determinates for financial satisfaction. Congruently, Kempson et al. ( 2013 ) identified key drivers of FWB as financial literacy, capability, as well as individual psychology and behavior. Moreover, their research on measuring FWB shows that both objective and subject matters tend to change over time. Further work on developing FWB measures and indexes can be found in the work of Prawitz et al. ( 2006 ) in which eight scaled questions were developed to evaluate both subjective feelings (i.e., confidence about future or financial resilience) and objective factors such as how often someone has situations where they ‘just get by’ in a given month. Another empirical work of scaled measurement is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) set of ten questions, developed through cognitive interviews (CFPB, 2017 ). 

In most of the scaled measurements identified in the literature search, the concept of calculating a FWB score is used to create an individual’s financial wellbeing categories. For instance, the scoring used by the Australian and New Zealand governments has four FWB state categories: no worries, doing ok, getting by, and struggling – with each category being rated through a person’s score of FWB components: financial resilience, feeling financially comfortable, meeting everyday commitments, and feeling secure in the future (Kempson & Evans, 2022 ). We also found studies (Bruggen et al., 2017 ; Iannello et al., 2021 ; Prawitz et al., 2006 ) that focus on the manifestation of FWB determinants in everyday life. For example, spending habits, risky borrowing, or payday loans for daily consumption are used as indicators of financial behavior determinate which can be affected by external contexts such as consumer market, technology, or legal factors.

Finally, we found practice-oriented research with a focus on individuals’ financial behavior. In 2005, the UK financial regulator (2005) developed the notion of financial capabilities to improve one’s financial circumstance with a focus on behavior: ‘what consumers do/should do’ as opposed to ‘what they have/know’. These intervention-focused studies highlight skills such as money management, budget planning, financial product awareness, and access to financial assistance as the primary drivers of an individual’s FWB (Kempson et al., 2013 ).

In sum, research in the field shows that customers’ current and future financial resilience can be derived from key determinates such as level of financial literacy, financial behavior, and sociodemographic factors. In addition, indicators of these determinates, usually manifested in the form of behavior or financial decision-making, have been identified as indicators of future financial state. Figure  3 illustrates a FWB framework that encompasses these elements, including interventions, determinates and their indicators, external factors, and FWB components in the form of outcomes. In what follows, a summary of each element is presented.

Conceptual framework of FWB determinates, their indicators, and influencing factors

FWB Determinate and their Indicators

Four financial determinates were identified as containers for FWB indicators: behavioral, socio-demographics, psychological, and knowledge/literacy. Financial behavior consists of individuals’ actions in terms of managing their money which at times may also represent financial stress coping behaviors (Sorgente & Lanz, 2017 ). Financial behavior is a practice-focused determinate with tracking indicators spanning from an individual’s daily spending habits to long-term saving plans and credit management skills; hence financial behavior is at times used synonymously with financial capabilities. It is also where most of the intervention measures are focused. Other indicators associated with financial behavior include overspending, risky credit use, late bill payments, time orientation, current and future financial risk, and positive actions such as budget settings and retirement savings.

Socio-demographic determinates represent an individual’s social information (e.g., age, gender) and economic factors (e.g., household income). By one account, socio-demographics determinate accounts for 54% of an individual’s overall financial wellbeing outcome (Kempson & Evans, 2022 ). Parents’ social status has also been found to have a strong effect on young adults’ financial behavior (Xiao et al., 2011 ). Other indicators may include one’s own education level, country and area of residence, civil status, type of occupation, and status of employment. Psychology-based determinants include an individual’s cognitive abilities as well as personality traits and attitudes that can shape financial outcomes. In a large longitudinal study, Furnham and Cheng ( 2017 ) found that while childhood intelligence (at age 10) can predict future FWB among women, parent social standing in childhood has stronger associations with adult men’s FWB. In addition, personality-related features such as locus of control, low materialism, impulsivity, frugality, and self-esteem are routinely considered psychological determinate indicators of FWB (Brüggen et al., 2017 ; Hashmi et al., 2021 ; Iannello et al., 2021 ). Recently represented as financial knowledge and skill, financial literacy indicators include one’s ability in numeracy, digital literacy, knowledge of products, money management, and proactive actions such as budgeting (Bruine de Bruin & Slovic, 2021 ; Singh & Malik, 2022a ). After behavior, financial literacy indicators are appropriate targets for proactive intervention efforts to improve individual FWB.

FWB Interventions

Two closely related determinates – financial behavior and literacy – are the common target areas of intervention. Financial literacy efforts are commonly developed to improve consumers’ understanding of their financial health including saving, budget planning, at times providing tools to do so. Intervention studies in financial behavior can be more proactive and target individual capabilities such as saving, spending, and investing through behavior change models including nudging, rewarding health behavior, or at times targeting structural changes through policies such as pension schemes (Brüggen et al., 2017 ; Kempson & Evans, 2022 ).

External Factors

At times included in the socio-demographic determinate, external factors constitute financial elements that affect an overall population such as inflation, economic development, political and legal factors, technological, and sociocultural factors, and personal life events such as job loss, divorce, and death in the family (Brüggen et al., 2017 ; Vlaev & Elliott, 2014 ). Though crisis management skills, access to help, and adaptions are seen as successful coping mechanisms, external factors can involuntarily shape an individual’s financial behavior.

Components of FWB

Finally, we found studies that focused on FWB components to measure an individual’s overall FWB and used to describe the consequences or legacy of determinates. Kempson et al. ( 2017 ), for example, identified four FWB components – meeting every day ends, feeling comfortable, resilience (ability to absorb financial shock), and security for the future – which they later used to categorize individuals into different wellbeing scales. Diener et al. ( 1999 ) found that psychological indicators notably affect the subjective component of FWB, and listed ‘health, family, leisure, and work’ as a critical component of FWB (Singh & Malik, 2022a ). Brüggen et al. ( 2017 ) took a different approach where they delineated FWB components at different levels with different stakeholders – individual, collective, organizational, and societal levels. Table 2 summarizes our findings of FWB determinates, indicators, interventions, and components, uncovered in step one of the literature reviews. Note that the classification of these indicators is not an exhaustive list and that their effect on an individual’s FWB should be assumed to be the result of their collective and inter-acting influences.

FWB in the Context of Gambling

Gambling and consequences of financial harm.

In most of the harmful gambling articles we reviewed, an individual’s FWB was identified as the first of the many problems players encountered and thereby considered the first sign of harmful gambling. Dimensions of financial harms have been developed based on their effect on individuals, families, communities, societal, or population levels (Abbott, 2020a , 2020b ; Wardle et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, Langham et al. ( 2016 ) demonstrated the impact of financial harm by delineating it as a continuum, capable of manifesting as both an immediate crisis and a lasting legacy. Lack of FWB consequences identified in the literature includes trouble in meeting daily ends (e.g., reduced disposable income, not being able to cover basic needs or payday loans), lack of financial resilience (e.g., unable to take small financial shocks like buying a wedding gift), lack of future financial security (e.g., asset losses), and lesser financial choices (e.g., homelessness) (Hilbrecht et al., 2020 , 2020; Langham et al., 2016 ; Latvala et al., 2022 ).

Harm has also been examined from a non-problem gambling perspective. Currie et al. ( 2017 ), for example, argued that non-problem gambling can still hold negative financial consequences affecting an individual’s ability to meet ends and financial resilience. Other studies, such as Farrell’s ( 2018 ), noted that harm to an individual’s general subjective well-being can be considered a wellbeing component effect of harm arising from gambling behavior.

Financial Determinates

The financial behavior determinates in the form of wagering and win withdrawal behaviors have been examined to detect early warning signs of harmful gambling. The literature identified and organized into this cluster tended to start with identifying determinate indicators (such as chasing losses) and work through identifying how such an indicator could be manifested in transactional data. For instance, Deng et al. ( 2019 ) identified indicators and their manifestations in transactional data in the form of gambling frequencies (e.g., active betting days), intensity (e.g., average bet size), or trajectory (e.g., variation of wager size over time). Congruently chasing behaviors can be detected by examining cumulative gains and losses across a given period where the deposit amount is consistently increasing (Ma et al., 2014 ).

Adami et al. ( 2013 ) observed that a betting pattern resembling a 'sawtooth'—characterized by escalating wager amounts followed by smaller bets (crashing bets)—indicates fund depletion. In addition, Haeusler ( 2016 ) showed that win withdrawal markers such as variance in amounts and reversing withdrawal patterns can also be used to detect harmful gambling. More financial behaviors such as the choices of payment method (e.g., credit vs. prepaid card use), late payments in the dunning process, small withdrawals accompanied by a steady increase in deposits, auto-deposit settings, and hitting limits are also associated with harmful gambling (Adami et al., 2013 ; Braverman & Shaffer, 2012 ; Haeusler, 2016 ). Psychological determinates such as impulsivity and self-control can also be manifested in transactional data. Catania and Griffiths ( 2022 ) noted that loss of control can be detected from an individual’s request to remove financial safety net tools such as budget settings. Smaller consecutive bets followed by a one-time arbitrary high bet are found to indicate an impulsive personality (Deng et al., 2019 ). In addition, the psychological state of being in a flow (Lavoie & Main, 2019 ), altitude, and motivation to win money in general, and the role of money in particular, have been identified to result in heightened gambling activities (Chen et al., 2012 ; Wulfert et al., 2008 ). While certain financial behaviors, such as wagered amounts may not be directly observable in the financial institution dataset, general patterns can potentially be inferred from deposit requests and winnings withdrawal, as these are closely linked to overall wagering behavior (Lakew, 2022 ).

Financial literacy in the form of understating the effect of specific gambling products on finances has also been a subject of interest. Markham et al. ( 2017 ) noted that some gambling products such as EGM are found to have a greater prevalence of financial harm. In one of the largest gambling transaction dataset studies we found, Muggleton et al. ( 2021 ) showed that financial literacy indicators such as one’s financial inclusion and knowledge about holding insurance, credit card use, or debt payment management skills, can be used as indicators of financial harm. In the same vein, Heiskanen ( 2017 ) noted that the conceptualization and meaning of money in a player’s life can determine their financial behaviors. Even though there exists ample research work on the effect of socio-demographic factors on gambling behaviors per se, we found few research that connects these factors with one’s financial wellbeing. Canale et al. ( 2017 ) examined gambling harms from the perspective of poverty and inequality. Low levels of education and neighborhoods with low social capital and household income have also been identified as risk factors for harmful gambling (Hilbrecht et al., 2020 ).

Interventions and External Factors

The discussion of external factors that affect one’s FWB, such as a breakdown in one’s social relationships, is customarily discussed under the umbrella of consequences of harmful gambling (Abbott, 2020a , 2020b ; Langham et al., 2016 ). We have also found research that examines the increased use of digital technology and its effect on gambling behavior and financial health. Gainsbury and Blaszczynski ( 2020 ) noted that the proliferation of modern digital payment methods on gambling sites can result in easy depletion of funds through auto-deposit setting, direct redeposit of wins, or diminished value/lower awareness of spending. Cashless payment is generally found to affect lessening the so-called pain of paying; hence keeping individuals in the ‘state of flow’ and increasing ‘time on device’ – which both are associated with funds exhaustion (McGrath, 2006 ; Prelec & Loewenstein, 1998 ; Schüll, 2012 ). However, inconsistent results are reported whether the use of such payment solutions can exuberate harmful gambling (Palmer et al., 2021 ).

Similar to the general FWB research field, financial-oriented interventions in gambling research heavily focus on behavior determinate. Hurla et al., ( 2017 ) for example, suggested behavioral economics tools such as nudging and heuristics or ‘rule of thumb’ to facilitate beneficial behavior in decision-making. Technology-based interventions that include smart notifications of spending or real-time financial feedback are also proposed to avert harmful gambling (Lakew, 2022 ; Swanton et al., 2019 ; Wohl et al., 2017 ). In addition, intervention approaches in the gambling field tend to have a treatment orientation as opposed to prevention, though calls for policy and tech-tool-based preventive approaches are on the rise. Using the theory of affordance, Nower and Glynn ( 2022 ), for example, advocated for designing a regulatory policy that includes a robust assessment of what each player can afford before involving in gambling activities. Similarly, preemptive policies for non-problem gambling activities (Currie et al., 2009 ), default limits on digital payment accounts (Gainsbury & Blaszczynski, 2020 ), and an overall preventive public health approach have been proposed to curb harmful gambling (Livingstone & Rintoul, 2020 ).

3.4. Positioning Gambling within the Broader FWB Research and a Taxonomy of Indicators

The objective of this review was to explore a potential framework that financial institutions serving gambling customers could potentially adopt to advance the agenda of RG. By leveraging FWB as a lens, gambling-related financial determinates and their corresponding indicators can be established in a manner that resonates with financial institutions. Moreover, the general FWB intervention tools and approaches can offer insights into potential interventions that financial institutions can feasibly implement to support healthy spending behaviors in gambling. The present narrative review identified four overarching determinants of financial well-being: financial behaviors, socio-demographic factors, psychological elements, and financial literacy. In addition, external factors that affect one’s FWB, existing intervention approaches, and FWB components (outcomes) were identified.

Positioning the gambling financial literature within the larger FWB field, we found two prominent themes from our latent content analysis. The ‘outcome-focused’ studies – financial problems arise from harmful gambling – have to a larger degree influenced the extant research. To a lesser degree, and more recently, inferring harmful gambling based on financial behavior determinates has been examined based on financial data (Muggleton et al., 2021 ). We also found evidence that the role of money, monetary format, and financial institution’s responsibility and potential contribution to the effort of responsible gambling has been the subject of discussion (Heiskanen, 2017 ; Palmer et al., 2021 ; Swanton et al., 2019 ). The discussion of interventions, from both theoretical and practical level perspectives (e.g., public health approach or setting gambling budget limits), have also been examined to improve one’s subjective and financial wellbeing in the context of the gambling (Abbott, 2020a , 2020b ; Farrell, 2018 ; Nower & Blaszczynski, 2010 ). Other general FWB determinates we identified – socio-demographic, external factors, and financial literacy – are either explored only in the context of gambling behavior (e.g., in the case of socio-demographics) or minimally acknowledged for their direct impact on players' FWB (e.g., in the case of financial literacy indicators).

The general FWB literature can provide a robust representation of financial indicators, their in-between interactions, key manifestations of these indicators, and intervention approaches that fit financial institutions’ framing of FWB. In line with such framing, Table  3 presents a catalog of FWB elements we identified in the gambling literature, organized in the form of taxonomy. The classifications presented in the taxonomy resemble the elements we identified in the FWB conceptual framework that can also be directly or indirectly observed from transactional data and/or in users’ profile information in financial institutions’ dataset. As such, the taxonomy is structured in the form of determinates, indicators, their manifestations in customer data, and possible interventions by financial institutions and policymakers. Personal data that financial institutions collect on their customers (e.g., a user contacts customer service because of a gambling problem) are included in the socio-demographic determinate as they are routinely considered as a user-profile related dataset.

The classification of indicators can be used to target specific consumer FWB weaknesses and devise personalized interventions (e.g., impulsive spending with strict betting limit). Moreover, indicators we found in determinates such as socio-demographics can help to develop general preventive policy measures that, for example, set a limit on how much an individual can afford to gamble within a specific period. Finally, rooted in financial concepts, the taxonomy can serve as a base to advance: (1) available indicators for financial institutions to assess harmful gambling behaviors, (2) the potential use of individuals' FWB as a perspective to gauge if a customer can engage in gambling activities, thereby enabling preventive measures, and (3) potential policy measures, responsibilities, and incentives for financial institutions serving gambling customers to engage in RG efforts.

4. Scope and Limitation

The current research has a limited focus aimed at exploring feasible frameworks (i.e., FWB) to onboard financial institutions into the RG agenda. However, implementing such an initiative may entail practical, political, and ethical considerations that are beyond the scope of this research. For instance, there exists a strongly polarized debate in the field on how gambling research should conceptualize the issues of responsibility in gambling activity (Blaszczynski et al., 2022 ). On the one hand where gambling harms are perceived as a subjective experience resulting from the intensity of the gambling activities (i.e., dose), emphasis is given to individual responsibility to mitigate gambling risks (Shaffer et al., 2020 ). On the other hand, we can find the theoretical framing of gambling harms as a preventable public health disorder with a focus on promoting wider cross-sectoral responsibilities applicable at a population level (Johnstone & Regan, 2020 ). Moreover, 'external factors' such as individuals' financial circumstances, psychological as well as cognitive biases, and behaviors might contribute to risky spending habits. While existing literature underscores the adverse effects of problem gambling on financial health (Muggleton et al., 2021 ; Swanton et al., 2019 ), establishing a clear causal relationship between FWB and problem gambling can pose challenges. These might raise questions regarding the extent to which financial institutions should bear accountability for the FWB of their gambling customers.

Closely related to this challenge is the difficulty in rallying support for a cross-sectoral RG agenda where the ‘trade-off’ is, at times, politically portrayed as limiting individuals’ freedom to choose a recreational activity (Korn et al., 2003 ). Recent research has advocated for a middle ground where all stakeholders in gambling, including financial institutions, are urged to embrace responsibility in adopting RG initiatives (Gainsbury et al., 2020 ). However, formulating suitable incentives for all participants in gambling to promote active involvement in RG can present a challenge. Furthermore, there is a general lack of effective industry models concerning ethics and responsibility in the gambling context, and current structures such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) are perceived as overtly favorable to business interests to serve as effective platforms for RG engagement (Tetrevova, 2023 ).

There have been recent developments mandating financial institutions to undertake duties traditionally assumed by gambling operators – including treating operator customers as their customers – particularly if their substantial revenue comes from serving gambling customers (Finansinspektionens, 2022 ). Recent legislation in Sweden concerning third-party participants such as Fintech which serves gambling operators has now explicitly prohibited from serving offshore gambling operators where some Fintech has already faced penalties for non-compliance with these regulations (Spelinspektionen, 2023 ). As such, current trends suggest that policy-based incentives for financial institutions with gambling customers are on the rise, however, whether such a ‘responsibility-sharing’ trend would extend in the future to include harms from gambling activities remains to be seen.

Finally, we want to stress that items in the presented taxonomy are subjective, and defining individuals’ FWB state is best done through a concerted interaction between the indicators. As such, the present catalog of determinates and indicators would be of better use if seen as more of a starting point to facilitate the development of robust measurements. When finalizing the taxonomy, we went through key manifestation items to ensure that all items were captured by the corresponding indicator items. With methods such as cognitive interviews or quantitative survey questionaries, it is possible to empirically test key manifestation items, and consequently create scales to categorize an individual’s FWB state in a gambling context (Swanton et al., 2021 ).

5. Conclusion and Future Research Agenda

With the interdisciplinary nature of the gambling industry's growth, it can be argued that the responsible gambling agenda should not solely focus on gambling operators and players. The present study investigated the potential role, and direction for, payment providers serving gambling operators to engage in responsible gambling initiatives. Given that players tend to use one payment provider across multiple gambling sites, RG measures implemented at the provider level can have a wider positive effect on consumers’ gambling spending. In addition, payment institutions have a unique position to overview players’ cross-operator behavior of gambling – hence can offer a better evaluation and detection opportunities of harmful gambling. However, a body of literature suggests that ‘payment institutions with gambling customers lack comprehensive policies and strategies’ to engage in RG efforts (Hurla et al., 2017 ; Swanton et al., 2019 ). Our extant literature review illustrates that players’ financial aspects can be conceptualized through the lens of general FWB research, which can help to integrate financial institutions in responsible gambling initiatives.

The research area of financial institutions in the gambling context is relatively new. Drawing from the findings, the current study highlights potential research directions for the field to involve financial institutions in the RG agenda, as summarized in Table  4 . First, as Fintech companies have increasingly become the preferred way of handling deposit and win withdrawals in online gambling, their influence on gambling behavior and potential direction to onboard them to the RG agenda need formal conceptualizations. Second, as Fintech enables the gathering of account-based payment history, there exists an opportunity to provide a personalized intervention, including prior evaluation of individuals’ FWB, real-time feedback based on spending behavior as well as develop FWB score model to evaluate and categorize the level of financial state among players. Furthermore, the integration of gambling with other research fields such as finance, corporate responsibilities, and technology studies emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary research and collaboration across sectors involving researchers, industry stakeholders, and policymakers.

Finally, the fast adoption of online gambling has attracted profit-driven third-party actors such as Fintech to the field who lack RG knowledge nor are currently mandated by regulations to participate in gambling duty of care measures. Their growing involvement has led to uncharted territory regarding the responsibilities they should undertake, if any, and the types of incentives that can motivate their engagement in such duties. (e.g., policies and regulations). Consequently, the ongoing ‘political’ discourse around responsibilities, obligations, and incentives in gambling activities should start incorporating third-party gambling actors, such as financial institutions.

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Appendix I – Topic: General financial wellbeing

Documentation of search strategies.

Date: November 2022.

Databases :

Medline (Ovid)

Sociological abstracts (ProQuest)

Web of Science (Clarivate)

Psycinfo (EBSCO)

Total number of hits :

Before deduplication: 4,285

After deduplication: 2,693

2. Sociological abstracts

3. Web of Science Core Collection

4. Psycinfo

Appendix II – Topic: Gambling and financial wellbeing

Documentation of search strategies..

Total number of hits:

Before deduplication: 3,849

After deduplication: 2,271

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Lakew, N., Jonsson, J. & Lindner, P. Towards an Active Role of Financial Institutions in Preventing Problem Gambling: A Proposed Conceptual Framework and Taxonomy of Financial Wellbeing Indicators. J Gambl Stud (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-024-10312-8

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This paper studies people's understanding of inflation—their perceived causes, consequences, trade-offs—and the policies supported to mitigate its effects. We design a new, detailed online survey based on the rich existing literature in economics with two experimental components—a conjoint experiment and an information experiment—to examine how well public views align with established economic theories. Our key findings show that the major perceived causes of inflation include government actions, such as increased foreign aid and war-related expenditures, alongside rises in production costs attributed to recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic, oil price fluctuations, and supply chain disruptions. Respondents' anticipate many negative consequences of inflation but the most noted one is the increased complexity and difficulty in household decision-making. Partisan differences emerge distinctly, with Republicans more likely to attribute inflation to government policies and foresee broader negative outcomes, whereas Democrats anticipate greater inequality effects. Inflation is perceived as an unambiguously negative phenomenon without any potential positive economic correlates. Notably, there is a widespread belief that managing inflation can be achieved without significant trade-offs, such as reducing economic activity or increasing unemployment. These perceptions are hard to move experimentally. In terms of policy responses, there is resistance to monetary tightening, consistent with the perceived absence of trade-offs and the belief that it is unnecessary to reduce economic activity to fight inflation. The widespread misconception that inflation rises following increases in interest rates even leads to support for rate cuts to reduce inflation. There is a clear preference for policies that are perceived to have other benefits, such as reducing government debt in progressive ways or increasing corporate taxes, and for support for vulnerable households, despite potential inflationary effects.

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Adhesive coatings can prevent scarring around medical implants

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When medical devices such as pacemakers are implanted in the body, they usually provoke an immune response that leads to buildup of scar tissue around the implant. This scarring, known as fibrosis, can interfere with the devices’ function and may require them to be removed.

In an advance that could prevent that kind of device failure, MIT engineers have found a simple and general way to eliminate fibrosis by coating devices with a hydrogel adhesive. This adhesive binds the devices to tissue and prevents the immune system from attacking it.

“The dream of many research groups and companies is to implant something into the body that over the long term the body will not see, and the device can provide therapeutic or diagnostic functionality. Now we have such an ‘invisibility cloak,’ and this is very general: There’s no need for a drug, no need for a special polymer,” says Xuanhe Zhao, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering.

The adhesive that the researchers used in this study is made from cross-linked polymers called hydrogels, and is similar to a surgical tape they previously developed to help seal internal wounds. Other types of hydrogel adhesives can also protect against fibrosis, the researchers found, and they believe this approach could be used for not only pacemakers but also sensors or devices that deliver drugs or therapeutic cells.

Zhao and Hyunwoo Yuk SM ’16, PhD ’21, a former MIT research scientist who is now the chief technology officer at SanaHeal, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in Nature . MIT postdoc Jingjing Wu is the lead author of the paper.

Preventing fibrosis

In recent years, Zhao’s lab has developed adhesives for a variety of medical applications, including double-sided and single-sided tapes that could be used to heal surgical incisions or internal injuries. These adhesives work by rapidly absorbing water from wet tissues, using polyacrylic acid, an absorbent material used in diapers. Once the water is cleared, chemical groups called NHS esters embedded in the polyacrylic acid form strong bonds with proteins at the tissue surface. This process takes about five seconds.

Several years ago, Zhao and Yuk began exploring whether this kind of adhesive could also help keep medical implants in place and prevent fibrosis from occurring.

To test this idea, Wu coated polyurethane devices with their adhesive and implanted them on the abdominal wall, colon, stomach, lung, or heart of rats. Weeks later, they removed the device and found that there was no visible scar tissue. Additional tests with other animal models showed the same thing: Wherever the adhesive-coated devices were implanted, fibrosis did not occur, for up to three months.

“This work really has identified a very general strategy, not only for one animal model, one organ, or one application,” Wu says. “Across all of these animal models, we have consistent, reproducible results without any observable fibrotic capsule.”

Using bulk RNA sequencing and fluorescent imaging, the researchers analyzed the animals’ immune response and found that when devices with adhesive coatings were first implanted, immune cells such as neutrophils began to infiltrate the area. However, the attacks quickly quenched out before any scar tissue could form.

“For the adhered devices, there is an acute inflammatory response because it is a foreign material,” Yuk says. “However, very quickly that inflammatory response decayed, and then from that point you do not have this fibrosis formation.”

One application for this adhesive could be coatings for epicardial pacemakers — devices that are placed on the heart to help control the heart rate. The wires that contact the heart often become fibrotic, but the MIT team found that when they implanted adhesive-coated wires in rats, they remained functional for at least three months, with no scar tissue formation.

“The formation of fibrotic tissue at the interface between implanted medical devices and the target tissue is a longstanding problem that routinely causes failure of the device. The demonstration that robust adhesion between the device and the tissue obviates fibrotic tissue formation is an important observation that has many potential applications in the medical device space,” says David Mooney, a professor of bioengineering at Harvard University, who was not involved in the study.

Mechanical cues

The researchers also tested a hydrogel adhesive that includes chitosan, a naturally occurring polysaccharide, and found that this adhesive also eliminated fibrosis in animal studies. However, two commercially available tissue adhesives that they tested did not show this antifibrotic effect because the commercially available adhesives eventually detached from the tissue and allowed the immune system to attack.

In another experiment, the researchers coated implants in hydrogel adhesives but then soaked them in a solution that removed the polymers’ adhesive properties, while keeping their overall chemical structure the same. After being implanted in the body, where they were held in place by sutures, fibrotic scarring occurred. This suggests that there is something about the mechanical interaction between the adhesive and the tissue that prevents the immune system from attacking, the researchers say.

“Previous research in immunology has been focused on chemistry and biochemistry, but mechanics and physics may play equivalent roles, and we should pay attention to those mechanical and physical cues in immunological responses,” says Zhao, who now plans to further investigate how those mechanical cues affect the immune system.

Yuk, Zhao, and others have started a company called SanaHeal, which is now working on further developing tissue adhesives for medical applications.

“As a team, we are interested in reporting this to the community and sparking speculation and imagination as to where this can go,” Yuk says. “There are so many scenarios in which people want to interface with foreign or manmade material in the body, like implantable devices, drug depots, or cell depots.”

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

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Press mentions, interesting engineering.

MIT engineers have developed a new adhesive, low-cost hydrogel that can stop fibrosis often experienced by people with pacemakers and other medical devices, reports for Maria Bolevich Interesting Engineering . “These findings may offer a promising strategy for long-term anti-fibrotic implant–tissue interfaces,” explains Prof. Xuanhe Zhao. 

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Related Links

• Xuanhe Zhao
• Hyunwoo Yuk
• Jingjing Wu
• Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Related Topics

• Mechanical engineering
• Civil and environmental engineering
• Biomedical engineering
• Medical devices
• National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• National Science Foundation (NSF)

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