Content area
Full Text
There is a current lack of descriptive information on college students who gamble on the Internet. With the increasing popularity of Internet gambling, this study aimed to better understand the profile of Internet gamblers among a sample of college students. Of 909 students at the University of California-Los Angeles who completed an online survey, 8.1% reported gambling for money on the Internet at least once in their lifetime and 5.7% reported Internet gambling within the past year. Approximately one third of Internet gamblers were identified as either at-risk or probable pathological gamblers. Males were much more likely to gamble on the Internet compared to females. Those who gambled on the Internet gambled more frequently and were more likely to report indicators of potentially harmful lifestyles (e.g., drinking alcohol, smoking, using marijuana, using illicit drugs, and unhealthy body mass indices) compared to non-Internet gamblers and nongamblers. Poker, the predominant gambling activity, is discussed in terms of its role as the driving force behind Internet wagering among college students.
Since the mid-1990s, the gaming industry has undergone significant changes. The most notable transformation has been the introduction and rapid growth of Internet gambling (National Gambling Impact Study Commission, 2001). Internet gambling can be broadly defined as any wagering of real money that takes place on the World Wide Web. Virtually any form of gambling is available on Internet sites either operated, regulated, or unregulated by North American government agencies. Although revenues from regulated forms of gambling, such as lotteries, casinos, and horse racing, have traditionally continued on an upward trend, a significant number of people worldwide are also engaging in gambling on the Internet (Hopkins, 2007; Wood & Williams, 2007).
Qualitative data suggest that college and university students may be the fastest growing segment of Internet gamblers (Brown, 2006). The growth of online gambling among college students has been attributed to several factors including greater familiarity with technology among college student making Internet gambling a more accessible activity, increased availability of free, high-speed, and wireless Internet on college campuses, low costs of personal computers, and high rates of credit card ownership among college students. College students have been shown to be much heavier Internet users compared to the general population (Jones, 2002). This disparity in Internet...