Study Of Causes Of Pathological Gamblers In Internet Sports Gambling

Internet gambling, known as WEB gambling or online gambling, refers to the activitiesthat gamblers gamble online through personal terminal. Gambling Addiction (GA) isalso called as pathological gambling, and the addicts are called as pathological gamblers(PGs). Gambling has caused the outflow of huge funds and leaved huge social cost toChina. But for the moment, there was no study focused on internet gambling, let alonesports gambling. Therefore, this study aimed at exploring the cause of PGs from theaspects of gambling motives, gambling cognition, internet use, demography andbehavior characteristics, in order to provide better treatment and prevention for PGs.Objective: Through the first analysis of psychological and behavioral characteristics ofPGs in internet sports gambling (ISG) in Chinese Mainland, we explored the stagedevelopment modal of pathological internet sports gambling (PISG) and the correlationof PISG and internet addiction disorder (IAD), then the causes of PGs, to providesreference data for better treatment and prevention.Methods：In this study,155self-selecting internet sports gamblers were surveyed usingonline questionnaire posted on some most famous sports forums in China. Thequestionnaire includes DSV-IV criteria for pathological gambling, Chen InternetAddiction Scale, motivation and cognition items, general information, and gamblingrelated questions. Continuous variables were compared with the t-test and Categorical variables were compared with the chi-square test between the PISG and non-PISGgroups. All comparisons were two-tailed. And univariate logistic regression wasperformed to screen out the variables significantly associated with PISG adjusting forsex, age, employment, education, and income. Then, these variables entered intostepwise multivariate logistic regression used to identify the factors independentlyassociated with the occurrence of PISG.Results:1. Male, above28, employed, university degree and monthly income1000-3000werethe significant features of the88PGs.2. The multivariate logistic regression showed that among all the factors significantlyassociated with PGs, the most significant independent factor was internet addiction(AOR=3.15;95%CI:1.43-6.96), secondly “Don’t have the ability to stop gambling”(AOR=1.67;95%CI:1.24-2.25), thirdly “Parents smoke”(AOR=1.42;95%CI:1.02-1.98).3. The prevalence of PISG was56.8%; and56.1%of internet sports gamblers chosebuying sports lottery as the reason to begin the first internet sports gambling practice.Conclusion:1. Internet addiction made gamblers in ISG more likely to be addicted to gambling. Themisconception,“Don’t have the ability to stop gambling”, was a very important reasonfor gamblers developing into PGs.2. Buying sports lottery served an important medium in the development of PISG. PISGprobably should not be classified as IAD, but maybe have the comorbidity of IADconcurrently.