Abstract
Gambling as a youth is a risk factor for experiencing gambling-related harm as an adult. Most youth gambling research focuses on illegal engagement with age-restricted products, but youth can also gamble legally, by for example betting with friends, or via coin pusher and crane grab machines. Research has associated recollected rates of usage of these machines as a child with adult gambling participation and problems, but only in the UK and Australia, and has not tested for robustness to subjective confidence. The present study conceptually replicated these prior studies by investigating the association between recollected childhood use of coin push and crane grab machines, and adult gambling behavior, in a young adult USA sample. Participants rated their subjective confidence to test if individual differences in recollection biases provided a better account for any observed associations. Results found high recollected engagement rates for both coin pusher (87.2%) and crane grab machines (97.0%), and 5 of the 6 tested associations between youth machine usage and adult gambling engagement and problems were significant and in the hypothesized direction. Rates of subjective confidence were on average high (83.3 and 89.2 on a 0 to 100 scale), and generally did not interact with participants’ recollected rates of machine use. These findings extend prior research on potential public health concerns around children’s legal engagement with coin pusher and crane grab machines to a new country, the USA.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of Gambling Studies |
| Early online date | 25 Oct 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 25 Oct 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was funded by a startup grant awarded to Philip Newall from the University of Bristol.
Funding Information:
Oliver Bastiani declares no conflicts. Alex Russell has received funding from Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation; New South Wales Office of Responsible Gambling; South Australian State Government; Queensland Justice and Attorney-General; Gambling Research Australia; New Zealand Ministry of Health; Australian Communications and Media Authority; National Association for Gambling Studies and the Alberta Gambling Research Institute. He has had travel expenses paid to present research by the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, PsychMed and the Hawthorn Hawks Football Club Players’ Association. He is also affiliated with the University of Sydney and Deakin University. He declares no conflicts of interest in relation to this manuscript. Philip Newall is a member of the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling – an advisory group of the Gambling Commission in Great Britain, and in 2020 was a special advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee Enquiry on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry. In the last three years, Philip Newall has contributed to research projects funded by the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling, Clean Up Gambling, Gambling Research Australia, NSW Responsible Gambling Fund, and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. Philip Newall has received travel and accommodation funding from Alberta Gambling Research Institute, and received open access fee funding from Gambling Research Exchange Ontario.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
Research Groups and Themes
- Gambling Harms
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This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via Springer at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-023-10261-8. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher