Individual risk factors and prediction of gambling disorder in online sports bettors - the longitudinal RIGAB study

Theresa Wirkus; Robert Czernecka; Gerhard Bühringer; Anja Kräplin

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1320592

Individual risk factors and prediction of gambling disorder in online sports bettors - the longitudinal RIGAB study

Front Psychiatry. 2024 Feb 27:15:1320592. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1320592. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Theresa Wirkus¹, Robert Czernecka^{1

2}, Gerhard Bühringer^{1

2

3}, Anja Kräplin¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Institute for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
² Institut für Therapieforschung IFT, Prävention und betriebliche Gesundheitsförderung GmbH, München, Germany.
³ Department of Clinical Research, Faculty of Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.

Abstract

Introduction: While research in online sports betting is dominated by studies using objective player tracking data from providers to identify risky gambling behavior, basicresearch has identified various putative individual risk factors assumed to underlie the development of gambling disorder across all types of gambling. This study aims to examine individual risk factors and their longitudinal clinical relevance in online sports bettors.

Methods: German online sports bettors (N = 607, M_age = 34, 92% male) from a provider based sample took part in an online survey. The study team randomly preselected customers to be invited. N = 325 (53,45%) of the participants also took part in an online follow-up survey one year later. Crosssectional and longitudinal associations of putative risk factors and DSM-5 gambling disorder in online sports bettors were analyzed. These risk factors include alcohol and tobacco use, impulsivity, difficulties in emotion identification, emotion regulation strategies, comorbid mental disorders and stress.

Results: We found more pronounced impulsivity, difficulties in emotion identification, emotion suppression, comorbid mental disorders and stress were cross-sectionally associated with gambling disorder, and longitudinally predicted gambling disorder in online sports bettors (with the exception of emotion suppression). In an overall model only lack of premeditation and perceived helplessness remained significant as predictors for gambling disorder. Online sports bettors with gambling disorder predominantly showed more pronounced risk factors, which were also confirmed longitudinally as relevant for the maintenance of gambling disorder.

Discussion: Risk factors such as impulsivity and stress and appropriate coping mechanisms should consequently be integrated not only into prevention efforts to identify individuals at risk early, but also into intervention efforts to tailor treatment.

Keywords: gambling disorder; individual risk factors; longitudinal study; online gambling; online sports betting.

Grants and funding

The authors declare that this study received funding from an unrestricted research donation (donation that does not assign purpose of use) to the Technische Universität Dresden provided by Tipico. Tipico was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication. The Article Processing Charge (APC) were funded by the joint publication funds of the TU Dresden, including Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine, and the SLUB Dresden as well as the Open Access Publication Funding of the DFG. The webbased software platform REDCap, used within this study for data collection, was funded through grants for unrelated projects at TU Dresden (DFG SFB/TRR 205).