Risks and Protective Factors of Online Gambling

Online Gambling, also known as iGaming is the online version of traditional gambling and it includes sports betting, casinos, virtual poker, lottery, fantasy sports, and more. It is a billion-dollar industry and has grown rapidly in recent years due to states changing their laws to allow for this type of gambling. While it can be fun and entertaining, for millions of people it can also lead to serious problems. This is why it’s important to take a responsible approach to gambling.

To investigate knowledge about risk and protective factors of online gambling, a systematic literature search was conducted in three different academic databases: PubMed, PsychInfo, and Scopus. The search was limited to articles published between 2010 and 2020. Two types of comparisons were made: the first one compared offline gamblers to online nonproblematic gamblers, and the second one compared online problematic gamblers to online nonproblematic gamblers.

The most common factor studied is high impulsivity, and it is strongly associated with online problem gamblers. Other factors that are studied are long session duration, early onset of gambling behaviour, and the use of mobile devices to gamble. A relevant number of studies have found that women are attracted to online gambling more than men, but these results should be interpreted with caution since some research is contradictory.

Personality traits seem to play an important role in online gambling, although this has not been explored thoroughly. The highest number of studies found that a dysfunctional personality is associated with problematic gambling in both offline and online gamblers. Moreover, the tendency to gamble with friends or in social contexts is found more often among online than offline gamblers.