The effects of sports gambling on young fans’ attitudes and behaviors in Hong Kong

Abstract

Sports gambling has become closely intertwined with sports. However, the effect of sports gambling on young adults have not been extensively investigated, even if it is expected that participating in sports gambling could influence young adults' attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, the purposes of the current study were a) to investigate the effects of sports gambling on young adults’ attitudes and behaviors and b) to evaluate the quality of life of young adults in Hong Kong. A total of 160 young adults (80 sports gamblers and 80 non-gamblers) in Hong Kong participated in the survey. The results of t-tests revealed the differences between sports gamblers and non-gamblers. Specifically, non-gamblers showed higher levels of sports fan identification, quality of life, BIRGing behaviors, prosocial behaviors, performance tolerance, and purchasing intention than sports gamblers, whereas sports gamblers had higher level of positive affect on sports spectating. Furthermore, the results of the multiple regressions indicated that sports fan identification and positive affect influenced non-gamblers’ purchasing intention, while only sports fan identification had an impact on sports gamblers’ purchasing intention. These results provided an empirical conformation of the effect of sports gambling on sports fan attitudes and behaviors, which contribute to our understanding of the destructive impact of sports gambling on sports fan experience.