Critical Gambling Studies

This scoping review aims to map the existing conceptualization of gender in peer-reviewed gambling scholarship to locate areas of future inquiry for a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between gender and gambling. It follows Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) framework for scoping reviews, updated by Levac et al. (2010) and Daudt et al. (2013). We located the relevant literature published between 2000-2020 by searching through eight academic databases using Boolean operators and various key search terms, yielding 31,533 results. After a thorough screening based on inclusion/exclusion criteria and excluding duplicates, we located 2,532 journal publications that addressed gender and gambling. Among them, 53.4% used gender as a descriptive demographic variable, 44.3% explored the comparative analysis between men’s and women's gambling behaviors, preferences, and risks, and only 2.3% focused on gender from a socio-cultural perspective. When articles mentioned gender,...

This study explores the social, economic, and public health impacts of gambling in South Africa over the last two decades. Using global and national data, provincial analyses, and case studies, it examines gambling participation, harms, and regulatory frameworks. The research highlights how gambling affects individuals, families, and communities, and assesses the role of online and offline gambling platforms. Recommendations focus on public health interventions, responsible regulation, and strategies to minimize gambling-related harm.

While the social and economic costs and benefits of new gambling locations have been studied extensively, less is known about how new venues are experienced in view of city residents’ spatial and sociocultural identities. This study examines residents’ opinions and expectations on a new small-scale casino in the City of Tampere, Finland, as a case of new gambling opportunities in an urban setting. Nine focus group interviews were conducted with 43 Tampere residents three years prior to the scheduled casino opening. The study points out ways in which the residents struggled conceptually with the casino project. When speaking about it, participants drew on an imagery of popular culture, drawing a sharp line between casino gambling and the everyday convenience gambling so omnipresent in Finnish society. As residents of a historical industrial urban region, the participants positioned themselves as critical towards the municipality’s aims to brand the venue in a larger experience econom...

The evolution of commercial gambling and its expansion into digital arenas has increased opportunities for people all over the world—including Indigenous people—to gamble. While there is considerable evidence for the suitability of a health promotion approach to improving the health and well-being of Indigenous communities worldwide, the evidence-base does not extend to the field of gambling research. A systematic review of reviews was conducted to identify relevant reviews in crossover areas of interest: interventions to address gambling-related harm in Indigenous populations and/or health promotion interventions on related health or behavioural outcomes. The quality of reviews was critically assessed—13 fit the inclusion criteria. Principal themes were characterised as being either related to ‘cultural,’ ‘structural,’ or ‘methodological’ factors. Findings indicate that an appropriate model of health promotion to address Indigenous gambling would necessarily involve careful conside...

On February 11–12, 2023, Concordia University’s Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) and the Jeu Responsable à l’Ère Numérique (JREN) hosted the GameBling Jam 2.0. The goal of this  48-hour  game jam was to design and prototype a video game around the theme  (Un)Lucky! This article will dive into the experience of participating in it and the framework to develop the game  Cat  Luck,  followed by a reflection on creative writing and interdisciplinary thinking around the question:  How does this experience produce new knowledge for non-experienced participants in the field?

Acknowledgement of gender disparity in academia has been made in recent years, as have efforts to reduce this inequality. These efforts will be undermined if insufficient numbers of women qualify and are competitive for academic careers. The gender ratio at each graduate degree level has been examined in some studies, with findings suggesting that women’s representation has increased, and in some recent cases, achieved equality. These findings are promising as they could indicate that more women will soon qualify for early-career academic positions. Most of these studies, however, examine a specific—or narrow subset—of academic disciplines. Therefore, it remains unclear if these findings generalize across disciplines. Gambling researchers, and the graduate students they supervise, are a uniquely heterogeneous group representing multiple academic disciplines including health sciences, math, law, psychology, and sociology, among many more. Thus, gambling student researchers are a grou...

This paper tells a place-based story of food in the Wasagamack territory in Manitoba, Canada, through traditional land-use map biographies with 49 active Indigenous harvesters, video interviews with eight key informants, and input from community workshops. Although harvesters in Wasagamack First Nation do not depend solely on wild foods, map biographies show that traditional land uses remain important and occur throughout their ancestral lands. This land remains pristine, with virgin boreal forests, natural flowing waters, and abundant wildlife, and occupied almost exclusively by Indigenous people who continue to harvest wild foods and speak their language fluently. All Wasagamack people interviewed (N=57) regarded the land to be perfect as the Creator made it, and sacred; they did not want development interfering with their traditional practices of hunting, gathering, and fishing and with their land-based spirituality, despite the community economic and infrastructure poverty. In o...

This article presents a comprehensive review of the scholarly discourse on psychological and relational approaches to gambling disorder treatment. The article focuses on the “what” of knowledge production and treatment delivery by systematizing information on the types of scholarly articles that have been published in the English language; the treatment approaches that have been researched and discussed in the Anglophone literature; and the context of knowledge production over the past 50 years. The review includes 445 articles that present the findings of case studies and evaluations of disordered gambling interventions (k = 231), descriptive research (k = 49), meta-analyses (k = 10), and literature reviews and descriptions of novel approaches (k = 155). The findings show that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), together with its constituent approaches, was the most discussed and researched approach to gambling disorder treatment in the period between late 1960s and the first half ...

This paper will explore how religious perspectives shape risk behavior throughout society, and how the logic of risk-taking influence religious groups and theologies. The paper is based on research in Las Vegas mega churches and internet savvy religious institutions. Marta Soligo Increasingly, tourists travel to experience adrenaline-based adventures that range from theme parks rides to gambling. This paper analyzes this phenomenon borrowing from Stuart Moss's notion of Thrillertainment, which is the idea of being scared and/or thrilled while being entertained. Dmitri Shalin This paper explores a continuum of gaming, gambling, and risk taking in society at large as crucial for understanding the American dream. The distinction is made between gaming as a challenge enjoyed for its own sake, gambling as betting a value on a chancy outcome, and calculated risk taking as a means of getting ahead in life's journey. The argument is made that everyday life is full of practical gambles which expose risk takers to setbacks and opportunities and which impact our life chances. The question is raised how the unequal distribution of life chances in American society affects the agent's willingness and ability to take a gamble.

The aim of this study is to provide an estimate of the social costs of gambling in Italy. In line with other research on social costs, the present study estimates the consequences of gambling harm on public finances, focusing on the estimated costs to treat high-risk gamblers, costs associated with productivity losses, costs of unemployment, personal and family costs, crime and legal costs. We used two different approaches to calculate these costs. The first approach, used for health care costs, consists of using the lump sum spent to prevent the harm caused to high-risk gamblers. The second approach involves estimating the number of high-risk gamblers causing the cost, which is then multiplied with the average unit cost per person. Our estimates of the annual social costs of gambling in Italy-more than EUR 2.3 billion-demonstrate a substantial economic burden to society. However, the costs are a substantial underestimate, as they are limited to those of a public nature and do not take into consideration those costs borne by moderate and low-risk gamblers, as well as affected others.

Japan has one of the highest rates of severe gambling problems in the world. However, the gambling forms that cause the most harm—pachinko and pachislot—are not recognized as gambling in the key legislation. They are understood as entertainment. On the basis of two group interviews with those who have experienced problems with gambling, this study explores how they have dealt with the shame, guilt, and stigma of pachinko-related gambling problems. The narrative analysis shows that the participants carry self-stigma as a result of self-reproach and others’ condemnation of their behavior. Feelings of shame, guilt, and fear of being stigmatized have distinctly hindered the process of seeking help. The participants describe how their gambling, which they had attempted to limit, had led to isolation from normal life. The isolation and the failures to control the gambling increased their feelings of shame and destructive behavior. Considering the characteristics of the zone, the loss of s...

This paper explores the legal and social status of the Åland-based gambling company Paf. Gambling and the gambling industry have increasingly moved online. Online provision has had implications for policy particularly due to increased competition in domestic markets from offshore gambling. In offshore gambling, unlicensed operators do not follow predetermined legal rules. Yet, there has been little research addressing the definition of offshore provision. Paf is an excellent example of a company that operates several roles: it is a monopoly on Åland, a licensed operator in some European jurisdictions, and an offshore operator in Mainland Finland. This paper uses key informant interviews (N=5) and legislative texts to study the social and legal implications of Paf's offshore operation. The findings show that offshore provision is heterogeneous and legally complex. A company such as Paf can at the same time operate within the legal framework and provide offshore gambling. This pos...

The recent pandemic has been identified as a driver of one of the most severe socio-economic crises over the last few decades. While some sectors have experienced an expansion, others have struggled with a changed business environment. The aim of this research is to simultaneously examine the financial performance and sustainability of the e-commerce and hospitality industries, applying asset and debt ratio analysis to the top five companies in the world from each sector in the time period from 2017 to 2022. The results indicate that the assessed companies demonstrated the ability to successfully manage some of their assets. The debt ratio analysis implies that the assessed companies in the hotel industry have reshaped their capital structure, increasing their reliance on debt in 2020 and 2021 to finance their assets. On the contrary, the selected e-commerce companies were found on average to rely less on debt to finance assets. In accordance with expectations, the differences acros...

This scoping review aims to map the existing conceptualization of gender in peer-reviewed gambling scholarship to locate areas of future inquiry for a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between gender and gambling. It follows Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) framework for scoping reviews, updated by Levac et al. (2010) and Daudt et al. (2013). We located the relevant literature published between 2000-2020 by searching through eight academic databases using Boolean operators and various key search terms, yielding 31,533 results. After a thorough screening based on inclusion/exclusion criteria and excluding duplicates, we located 2,532 journal publications that addressed gender and gambling. Among them, 53.4% used gender as a descriptive demographic variable, 44.3% explored the comparative analysis between men’s and women's gambling behaviors, preferences, and risks, and only 2.3% focused on gender from a socio-cultural perspective. When articles mentioned gender,...

Self-exclusion is an important harm minimization strategy implemented by gambling operators to restrict a problem gambler's access to gambling opportunities. Aspects of self-exclusion, including low uptake and non-compliance, limit the effectiveness of programs. Research that considers the consumer perspective is needed to enhance the perceived utility of self-exclusion in the target audience. Twenty interviews were conducted with current (n = 13) and former (n = 7) participants of a multi-venue self-exclusion program for land-based gaming machine venues in New South Wales, Australia. Participants were asked open-ended questions about their experiences and opinions of the program, including its strengths and weaknesses, and suggested improvements for future consumers. Overall, participants found self-exclusion beneficial. However, several shortcomings of the program were expressed, including lack of available public information and overly complicated registration processes. Participants lacked confidence in venues' willingness and ability to identify non-compliant gamblers and highlighted the need for vastly improved detection systems. The quality of interactions with venue staff in relation to self-exclusion were mixed; counsellor support, however, was perceived as important from beginning to end of a self-exclusion period. Results suggest that gambling operators should increase marketing efforts to promote the availability and benefits of self-exclusion. Investigation of strategies to streamline registration processes and to augment detection systems with new technologies was supported. Venue staff may benefit from training in appropriate self-exclusion facilitation procedures. Gambling operators should aim to foster strong links between self-exclusion programs and professional gambling counselling services.

The objective of this study was to examine the distribution of prestigious speaking roles by gender at gambling studies conferences to better understand the state of gender representation within the field. Keyword searches were conducted in the fall of 2019. A total of 16 conferences that occurred between 2010-2019 and comprising 882 prestigious speaking opportunities were included. Quantitative analysis (i.e., t-tests, chi-squared posthoc tests) was undertaken to evaluate the representation of women speakers and if proportions were the same across genders for speakers. There were significantly less women than men within prestigious speaking roles at gambling studies conferences with only 30.2% of speakers being women (p < .001). This underrepresentation of women was consistent across conference location, speaker continent, speaker role, time, and across the majority of conferences. Women held prestigious speaking roles less frequently than men (M = 1.48 vs. 1.76; p < .001). A 9 to 1 (p < .001) ratio of men to women was found among top 10 most frequent prestigious speakers. While there was a higher proportion of women than men among student speakers and there was no significant gender disparity among early career researchers, there was a significantly lower proportion of women than men among speakers who hold more senior academic positions. There is an issue of gender disparity in prestigious speaking roles at conferences within the gambling studies field. This study highlights the need to counteract gender disparities and make room for diversity within the field.

This paper explores the legal and social status of the Åland-based gambling company Paf. Gambling and the gambling industry have increasingly moved online. Online provision has had implications for policy particularly due to increased competition in domestic markets from offshore gambling. In offshore gambling, unlicensed operators do not follow predetermined legal rules. Yet, there has been little research addressing the definition of offshore provision. Paf is an excellent example of a company that operates several roles: it is a monopoly on Åland, a licensed operator in some European jurisdictions, and an offshore operator in Mainland Finland. This paper uses key informant interviews (N=5) and legislative texts to study the social and legal implications of Paf&#39;s offshore operation. The findings show that offshore provision is heterogeneous and legally complex. A company such as Paf can at the same time operate within the legal framework and provide offshore gambling. This pos...

This article highlights the pressing issue of youth gambling addiction, with up to 20% of young individuals engaging in gambling activities, particularly online. With 6-9% of US youth facing gambling problems. This study explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) can enhance harm reduction by providing personalized support, early intervention, and education while respecting privacy. The article draws insights from a review of 45 studies. It was found that youth gambling addiction is a global issue exacerbated by technology and the  pandemic.  LLMs  like GPT-4  offer promise in harm reduction by providing information and support.  LLMs can provide vital insights, educational materials, and support for responsible gambling. The article acknowledges potential  LLM  risks and emphasizes a  cautious approach.  Recommendations include personalized interventions,  online pop-ups,  enhanced  LLMs,  ongoing research,  multi-stakeholder collaboration, etc.

While it is well recognized that gambling behaviours are shaped by the contexts in which they occur, less research has investigated the relationship between poker and substance use (i.e., alcohol and other drugs). The current study explores poker players’ perceptions of the relationship between substance use and gambling. This qualitative descriptive study is a secondary data analysis of 25 interviews with poker players conducted as part of a broader prospective cohort project. From the thematic analysis, players described how specific contextual factors, such as social setting and location (e.g., bars, casinos) influenced their substance use. Poker players reported a relationship between substance use and gambling practices. However, players differed greatly in their decisions about whether, and how much, to use alcohol and other drugs, with individuals’ choices depending heavily on contexts (e.g., more inclined to partake when alcohol was available) and motivations (e.g., remainin...

Contemporary gambling spaces, representations and practices are in need of a critical interpretation that is informed by interdisciplinary approaches in the humanities as well as social sciences. To better understand the unique role of gambling in past and contemporary societies, East and West, it is helpful to come to terms with the deeper meaning gambling practices have in our lives, and what significance they hold as distinctive anthropological phenomena. This special issue includes contributions that were initially presented at the conference "Philosophy of Gambling" held at the University of Macau in October 2019. Macao's gambling market is one of the largest in the world, and it plays a central role in contemporary gambling studies. The event created a forum in which scholars either specialized in gambling studies, or with an interest in gambling as a cultural praxis, could engage in constructive dialogue. Some of the contributions from the conference in Macau are featured in this special issue, together with other relevant contributions. Articles span the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, communication studies, and anthropology. References to gambling are ubiquitous in philosophy and the arts, even if they tend to occur at the margins and below the surface of mainstream discourses and artistic genres. In this introduction we will start by turning to one genre, namely the depiction of gambling in film noir. We will then briefly summarize the contributions included in this special issue, including as they relate to Macao.