Gambling Drinking and Quality of Life Evidence f

Authors: Jasmine M Y Loo Yongdong Shi Xiaohong Pu

Publish Date: 2015/09/04

Volume: 32, Issue: 2, Pages: 391-407

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Abstract

The investigation of the interface between psychological constructs compulsive consumption of alcohol and pathological gambling is an important avenue for development of future initiatives in social marketing or prevention programs This crosscultural study attempts to bridge the gap in literature by providing an evaluation of the predictive ability of psychological variables such as gambling urge gamblingrelated erroneous cognitions and comorbid alcohol consumption on pathological gambling behaviour and its impact on overall quality of life indicators Participants consist of 445 Macao and Australian young adults Mean age = 23 years Results indicate that probable pathological gamblers as compared with nongamblers reported significantly lower quality of life in all domains—physical health psychological wellbeing social relationships and environment Adults who drank more alcohol and have stronger erroneous cognitions evidenced higher pathological gambling behavior Our research model fits both cohorts and interestingly erroneous gamblingrelated cognitions serve as a full mediator for the predictive relationship between gambling urge and pathological gambling in the Macao sample but serve as a partial mediator in the Australian sample Targeting erroneous cognitions in future social marketing or preventive campaigns should demonstrate to be an important strategy in reducing the effects of urge to gamble among atrisk individuals Further implications for the industry marketing and governmental strategies are discussedThis study was funded by the MUST Faculty Research Grants 0408 and The University of Queensland research funding Dr Jasmine Loo is currently a Visiting Research Scientist at Yale University and is a member of the National Committee on Problem Gambling Malaysia The remaining Authors declare no conflict of interest

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