Public health effects of gambling – debate on a conceptual model

Abstract

Background Gambling for money is a popular leisure time activity in most countries, which has major social and economic impacts not only affecting the gambler, but his/her significant others, and the society. Gambling impact studies can help researchers and policymakers compare the health and social costs and benefits of different gambling policies and can be used when considering which gambling policies will reduce or increase costs or benefits the most. In a public health approach, the impacts of gambling, negative and positive, are assessed across the entire severity spectrum of the activity. Although some studies have created basic principles for conducting impact studies, a theoretical model is currently lacking. The aim of this debate is to review complementing and contrasting views on the effects of gambling to create a conceptual model, where a public health perspective is applied. Main text The effects of gambling can be structuralized using a conceptual model, where impacts are divided into negative and positive; costs and benefits. Costs and benefits are categorized into three classes: financial, labor and health, and well-being. These classes manifest in personal, interpersonal, and societal levels. Individual impacts cause effects on a personal level to gamblers themselves. External impacts influence the interpersonal and society/community levels and concern other people. The temporal level refers to the development, severity and scope of the gambling impact. These include general impacts, impacts of problem gambling and long-term impacts of gambling. Conclusions The conceptual model offers a base on which to start building common methodology for assessing the impact of gambling on the society. While measuring monetary impacts is not always straightforward, the main issue is how to measure the social impacts, which are typically ignored in calculations, as are personal and interpersonal impacts. The reviewed empirical work largely concentrated on the costs of gambling, especially costs on the community level. The Model can be used to identify areas where research is scarce. Filling the gaps in knowledge is essential in forming a balanced evidence base on the impacts of gambling. Ideally, this evidence could be the starting point in formulating public policies on gambling.

The impact of COVID-19 lockdown on gambling habit: A cross-sectional study from Italy

“…We observed that survey participants having or having had an addiction were more likely to both play gambling before lockdown and worsen gambling activity during the lockdown. In line with current available literature, being a smoker (Latvala et al, 2019;Pacifici et al, 2019), or a cannabis user (Pacifici et al, 2019;Xian, Giddens, Scherrer, Eisen, & Potenza, 2014), or being affected by alcohol use disorder (Pacifici et al, 2019;Potenza et al, 2019), were all associated with being a gambler before lockdown. We also observed that electronic cigarette and HTP use were associated with being a gambler before lockdown.…”

“…Despite gambling is widely recognized as a popular leisure activity, it can affect well-being, social interactions and financial status of selected individuals. Gambling might therefore represent a potential public health concerning activity (Latvala, Lintonen, & Konu, 2019). Lifetime prevalence of combined problem gambling and pathological gambling has been estimated to range from 0.7 to 6.5% worldwide (Calado & Griffiths, 2016) and from 0.5 to 3.8% in Italy (Cavalera et al, 2018).…”

Charting a path towards a public health approach for gambling harm prevention

“…Although other frameworks have been advanced during this decade (e.g., see Finnish researchers Latvala et al’s ( 2019 ) Public Health Impacts of Gambling Model), they have not yet been as influential in shaping research and policy as those described above. With the expansion of new evidence-informed frameworks and models, the next logical step is to operationalize public health approaches to gambling harm, taking into consideration the inherent challenges and existing public health structures.…”

Reaching Out to Big Losers: How Different Types of Gamblers are Affected by a Brief Motivational Contact Initiated by the Gambling Provider

“…Commercial gambling is a large industry with many multinational and national companies (Hodgins and Petry 2016). Although gambling is a recreational activity for most individuals, a significant proportion develop gambling-related problems and problematic gambling is considered a public health issue in many countries (Latvala et al 2019;Wardle et al 2019). Gambling disorder is characterized by loss of control and negative consequences (American Psychiatric Association 2013), and the prevalence for gambling disorder and its subclinical form is around 2-4% in most jurisdictions (Williams et al 2012).…”