Gambling and Risk Behaviour: A Literature Review

Abstract

Determining the connections between gambling and other forms of risk activity is a complicated task. The research literature is not clear on the nature of the relationship between gambling and risk activity and, specifically, whether behaviours that appear somewhat similar derive from the same or different sources. On the one hand, researchers tend to use risk activities to predict certain other risk activities – a strategy that relies on the assumption that these activities stem from different sources. Still other studies suggest that risk activity, including gambling, are symptomatic of an underlying issue or issues and are therefore related and unsuited to use in causal models. In this review, we take a high level approach and establish the factors that are commonly associated with and used to explain both gambling and various risk activities. Demographic features come to the fore, including age, sex, socioeconomic status (SES) and family background. We then consider particular types of risk activities which are frequently discussed in the research literature. While the range of risk activity is far‐reaching, we limit our discussion to particular types of risk activity – those that tend to be most frequently discussed in tandem with gambling activity, including: alcohol use, drug use, smoking, and suicidal behaviour; also briefly referring to other less prominent types of risk activity, such as ‘risky’ sexual activity. The relationship between drinking and gambling, for example, is a mainstay of the gambling literature. Finally, we consider the explanations used to link these behaviours together, drawing specifically upon sociological, psychological and economic accounts of these behaviours. To establish these connections and identify themes, an extensive review of the literature was conducted using a number of databases, as detailed in Appendices One and Two. The initial search of the literature involved the identification of over 80,000 items, which were subsequently reduced through the use of Endnote (a bibliographic software) to include only the material deemed best suited to exploring the question of gambling’s link to other risk activity.