Social Capital and Gambling: Evidence from Australia

The prevalence of problem gambling in many countries necessitates research that examines factors influencing excessive and addictive consumption. We consider how social capital impacts gambling participation for a large representative sample of the Australian population. Specifically, we examine the...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of gambling studies Vol. 36; no. 4; pp. 1161 - 1181
Main Authors Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa, Farrell, Lisa
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.12.2020
Subjects
Adult
Australia - epidemiology
Behavior, Addictive
Community and Environmental Psychology
Economics
Ethnic Groups
Female
Gambling - psychology
Humans
Male
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Middle Aged
Models, Theoretical
Original Paper
Prevalence
Psychiatry
Risk
Risk-Taking
Social Capital
Social Networking
Social Support
Sociology
Surveys and Questionnaires
Australia
PGSI
Gambling
Social cohesion
Social capital
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:The prevalence of problem gambling in many countries necessitates research that examines factors influencing excessive and addictive consumption. We consider how social capital impacts gambling participation for a large representative sample of the Australian population. Specifically, we examine the association between social capital and gambling addiction using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. We address the endogeneity of social capital by instrumenting for social capital using an urban/rural reversed measure of ethnic diversity. Our main findings suggest that higher levels of social capital are associated with lower gambling risks measured by the Problem Gambling Severity Index. This general finding is robust to alternative ways of measuring social capital and gambling, and alternative estimation approaches. We also find that the effect of social capital is stronger in the case of problem gamblers compared to gamblers in other risk categories.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:1573-3602
1573-3602
DOI:10.1007/s10899-019-09901-9