| The general purpose of the current study was to examine the gambling behavior of college students and, in particular, college student athletes. Specifically, this study examined the relationships among subjective norms, gambling attitudes, gambling motivations, locus of control, and gambling intentions on the gambling behavior of college students. The goal of this study was to assess gambling in a specific population with easy access to gambling and to evaluate the adequacy of a modified Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) for predicting gambling frequency and gambling behavior. Several studies have used the TRA to examine gambling behavior (Cummings & Corney, 1989; Moore & Ohtsuka, 1997,1999; Oh & Hsu, 2001). AN of these studies have found the TRA to be an effective instrument when examining gambling behavior. However, the researcher chose to modify the IRA in the current study by adding two moderating variables, intrinsic motivation and locus of control, to the conceptual model in order to provide a better conceptual model for future research.;The results indicated the addition of the moderating variable in the IRA was appropriate. In the case of intrinsic motivation, both intrinsic motivation to know and intrinsic motivation to accomplish significantly moderated the relationship between gambling attitudes and gambling intentions, predicting 2% of the variance.;The current study found that (1) there were differences in gambling attitudes between men and women, (2) attitudes and subjective norms predicted gambling intentions and (3) motivations and locus of control moderated the relationship between gambling attitudes and gambling intentions. These results should be useful to athletic departments and student affairs officers, who are developing strategies to deal with gambling problems on campuses. In addition, the results relative to the revised TRA should be helpful to future researchers in this area. Future research should focus on additional psychological traits such as sensation seeking, aptitude, self-esteem, impulsivity, boredom, venturesomeness, passion, chasing, coping or escape as moderating variables that may influence gambling behavior among student athletes and other students. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
