Gambling motivation: comparisons across gender and preferred activity

ABSTRACT

People gamble for emotional, social and monetary reasons. However, it remains unclear whether the relationships between these distinct aspects of gambling motivation and gambling behaviour hold across gender and types of gambling. Thus, the current study compared gambling motivation across different subgroups while taking into account problem gambling severity. A total of 4945 adults were recruited as part of the Northern Territory (Australia) population gambling survey. Of the full sample, 1207 participants (52% female) completed the Gambling Outcomes Expectancies Scale to assess gambling motivation. This subsample comprised those who scored one or more on the PGSI (n = 407) and a random sample of those who gambled at least once a year with a PGSI of zero (n = 800). The findings revealed excitement, escape and monetary expectancies increased in concert with gambling risk for both men and women, although only escape differentiated the low-risk and at-risk gamblers when other expectancies were controlled. In relation to differences across types of gambling, horse races/sports bettors rated excitement but not escape more favourably than lottery players. These findings suggest problem gambling severity should be considered when examining motivation difference by gender and that gambling motivation depends, in part, on preferred activity.

KEYWORDS:

• Gambling Outcome Expectancies Scale (GOES)
• gambling motivation
• gambling risk status
• gender
• gambling preference
• population survey

Conflicts of interest

Funding sources

The 2015 NT Gambling Prevalence and Wellbeing Survey was funded by the Community Benefit Fund, Northern Territory Department of Business. MS was partially funded through a NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship.

Competing interests

No competing interests were reported by the authors.

Constraints on publishing

No constraints on publishing were reported by the authors.

Supplementary data

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

The 2015 NT Gambling Prevalence and Wellbeing Survey was funded by the Community Benefit Fund, Northern Territory Department of Business. MS was partially funded through a NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Mal Flack

Mal Flack is a lecturer in psychology at Charles Darwin University. His research interests include exploring the way individual differences, personal beliefs and social influences can be used to understand problem gambling and other behaviours.

Matt Stevens

Matt Stevens manages projects in alcohol and gambling, and provides statistical support on a large Indigenous tobacco survey and other projects. He has authored reports and journal articles in the field of social determinants of health with a focus on Northern Territory Aboriginal communities in the areas of gambling, housing, social and emotional well-being, natural fluoride and children’s dental caries, tobacco control and indicators of alcohol harms.