Financial speculation in Canada: prevalence, correlates and relationship to gambling

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present investigation was to determine the prevalence, demographic profile, and correlates of financial speculation in Canada, with a focus on its relationship to gambling. In cooperation with Statistics Canada, a brief assessment of financial speculation was developed and included in the 2018 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) and administered to 23,952 adults. The past year national prevalence of financial speculation was found to be 3.6%, with the province of Alberta having the only higher inter-provincial rate. Speculators were predominantly male, White, with a modal age of 30–49, and with higher educational attainment and household income. In terms of health indicators, they were more likely to be regular alcohol drinkers and occasional smokers, but to have better self-reported general health, mental health, and life satisfaction. However, the strongest multivariate predictor of speculation was higher frequency of gambling involvement. Speculators had higher levels of participation in all types of gambling (especially skill-based formats) with the exception of instant lotteries. This high level of involvement contributes to somewhat higher rates of problem gambling symptomatology. The present investigation confirms that speculation not only has a strong conceptual relationship to gambling but also a strong empirical relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Speculation
• day-trading
• gambling
• Canada

Disclosure statement

The Canadian Consortium for Gambling Research provided the funding for inclusion of the gambling and speculation questions included in the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS).

The authors have no constraints on publishing and declare no competing interests.

Preregistration statement

No preregistration was declared by the authors in relation to this manuscript.

Data availability statement

The CCHS data is currently available to qualified researchers at all Research Data Centres across Canada.

Notes

1. The traditional 8+ PGSI demarcation of problem gambling has good correspondence to clinically assessed problem gamblers in treatment, but poor correspondence to problem gamblers in the general population (Ferris & Wynne, 2001, p. 39; Ladouceur et al., 2005; Williams & Volberg, 2014). There are several reasons for this, but one of the central ones is because the PGSI was normed on a small group of treatment-seeking problem gamblers who tend to have a more pervasive and severe set of problems compared to problem gamblers in the general population.

2. Race/ethnicity was ascertained with the question ‘You may belong to one or more racial or cultural groups on the following list. Are you … ?’ (up to four categories could be endorsed). In the present analysis, the categories of West/Central Asian, Korean, and Japanese were combined with ‘Other’ due to small cell sizes for the gambling type x race/ethnicity cross-tabulations. Note also that the Indigenous category encompasses First Nations, Métis, and Inuk (Inuit).

3. The relationship between PGSI score and Non-Gambling among Speculators is due to the fact that some Non-Gambling Speculators have PGSI scores above 0 (they apparently construe the PGSI questions as applying to their speculation).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Nicole Williams

Dr. Jennifer Nicole Williams Dr. Williams is an Instructor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge.

Robert John Williams

Dr. Robert John Williams Dr. Williams is a Professor of Health Sciences at the University of Lethbridge and also a Coordinator with the Alberta Gambling Research Institute.

Nolan Brian Gooding

Nolan Brian Gooding Mr. Gooding is an undergraduate student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge.

Jessy Mix

Jessy Mix Ms. Mix is a graduate student in Applied Child & School Psychology program at the University of Calgary.