"We’re going to be riding on this issue for years," he said. For young adults who have grown up with video games and online gambling games, sports betting is the newest frontier—for both Gamblers Choice and researchers interested in understanding the consequences of early exposure to gambling. Studies have linked gambling disorders to variations in a variety of brain regions, particularly the striatum and prefrontal cortex, which are involved in reward processing, social and emotional problems, stress, and more.

The next section focuses on the key attitudinal differences that emerged from the results to answer our second research question. Where Ai is the response of individual i to one of the 12 questions on their attitude to gambling listed in Table ​Table2.2. Model parameters are given by γ while εi is a disturbance term with zero mean and constant variance. As the dependant variable, Ai, is a standardized measure of responses to attitude questions, γ should be interpreted as the average number of standard deviations of change in Ai per unit change in Zi. An important feature of the survey is that it reached beyond people who identify as gamblers, providing insights into a more diverse sample than many previous studies.

Given the vested interests that state governments have in tax revenue, Tonko’s proposals may not garner a lot of support among colleagues. Many politicians on both sides of the aisle have said that the legalization of gambling provides states with much-needed additional income. This appears to disproportionately afflict young male adults. Compulsive gambling habits can lead to mounting loans, credit card debt, and pressure to borrow or steal.

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However, a limitation is that the design is focused on members, fans or supporters of a group of elite clubs or teams, implying to some degree that respondents are likely to be more engaged with sport than the average member of the Victorian population. Therefore, the differences between bettors and non-bettors identified here are potentially lower bounds and analysis of a more representative sample might uncover even greater differences. Another important benefit of the sampling frame is that it is likely the target audience for sports betting advertisers. Therefore, the analysis offers insights into a group that is likely most targeted and affected by sports betting advertising and understanding this group provides valuable insights to harm minimization policies with respect to sports betting. Research into gambling behaviour can therefore address two broad issues. First, given the general prevalence of this behaviour, what does gambling tell us about the fallibility of decision-making mechanisms in the healthy human brain?

The same can be said for Bitcoin and there are many more examples. Research has also focused on people’s attitudes to sports betting advertising, to improve understanding of community sentiment. However, Pitt et al. (2016b) reported that young people’s discourses about sports increasingly involve discussions about gambling ‘odds’ and that some young people believe that gambling is a usual and valued consumption activity during sports. Alternative evidence suggests young men feel particularly overwhelmed and bombarded by sports betting advertising (Thomas et al., 2012). This is unsurprising because this group is the target market for most Australian wagering operators.