Gambling motivation and involvement: A review of social

Much contemporary research into gambling concerns problems and excessive
play. Leisure and consumer studies, economic studies on the process utility of gambling,
as well as various kinds of cultural approaches, highlight the positive sides of
gambling. They explain why people like to gamble; they tell about the fun, excitement
and rewards that people get from gambling. These positive aspects should be
taken into consideration when evaluating the overall public health effects of gambling
and more broadly the costs and benefits of gambling in society.
Much research into gambling also provides – explicitly or implicitly – answers
to the question of why people gamble. We have seen that there are good answers to
that question, and we can also observe that in most Western societies the majority
of the population gamble. This is quite natural, given that gambling products are
affordable to anyone and the high and varied appeal of the games. A more intriguing
question might therefore be why some people do not gamble.
Towards a cross-fertilization between quantitative
and qualitative gambling studies
There is an unfortunate gap between the medical paradigm in gambling studies and
socio-cultural approaches. The medical paradigm focuses on gambling as pathology
and has a tendency to see pathological traits even in gambling behavior that is
generally perceived to be normal. The socio-cultural approaches are mostly concerned
with the problem-free leisure gambler, and there is a tendency to criticize the
“medicalization” of gambling behavior. Excessive gambling is viewed as a social
problem and the very concept of “pathological gambling” may be viewed as stigmatizing
labeling of behavior perceived as deviant relative to the values of mainstream
society.
The public health approach, to conceptualize and study gambling, has the potential
to bridge the gap between the medical and socio-cultural paradigms: “public”
referring here to society and culture, and “health” to well-being and quality of life
in a wider sense than implied by the concept “medical” [434]. The approach is wellsuited
to handling the fact that people’s gambling forms a continuum from problem-free
leisure activity to utterly self-destructive behavior, often of a compulsive
character: the player cannot stop despite a rational wish to do so. This review has
adopted the public health perspective and pointed out social, economic and cultural
research on gambling that may be useful in identifying factors that influence the risk
of individuals to develop gambling problems.
Quantitative and qualitative studies of gambling complement each other and
the ideal is the cross-fertilization between these two approaches. On the one hand,
findings from qualitative studies may be useful for designing quantitative investigations
(for instance, when formulating survey questions) and in the interpretation of
results (i.e. giving hints about causal relationships). Furthermore, qualitative studies
provide a reality check for quantitative survey studies (i.e. “What do these figures
68 G A M B L I N G M O T I VAT I O N A N D I N V O LV E M E N T