New Research: Being Close to Gamblers Increases Your Risk

Being close to someone with a gambling problem puts you at risk of developing a gambling issue of your own, according to new research involving the University of Bath. Strong family relationships can help reduce this risk. However, friendships do not appear to confer the same protection. The study—an international collaboration led by Tampere University in Finland, with significant involvement from the University of Bath—analyzed data from a large sample size of 1,530 adults, exploring how exposure to problem gambling within family or friend networks influences an individual's own gambling behavior. The researchers also examined whether social connectedness could act as a buffer against harm. The study is published in the Journal of Gambling Studies. Study participants were questioned about their exposure to problem gambling and their social connections on eight separate occasions at six month intervals from 2021 to 2024, enabling researchers to track changes and patterns across the study period. Using advanced statistical modeling, the new study found that individuals were more likely to develop gambling problems when they reported that a family member or friend also had gambling issues. Crucially, strong family relationships significantly reduced this risk, whereas friendships did not provide a comparable protective effect. The study's authors suggest programs aimed at reducing gambling harm should not only target individuals but also make greater use of the protective nature of positive family relationships to mitigate risk. Co-author and Emeritus Professor at Bath, Richard Velleman, said, "It has long been known that alcohol-related problems run in families—this study demonstrates that this is also the case with gambling. "This is an important discovery, as many people don't see gambling problems as equivalent to alcohol or drug problems, as gamblers don't 'ingest' anything, yet gambling can equally lead to considerable problems which cause serious harm to individuals and families." Lead author, doctoral researcher Emmi Kauppila, from the Emerging Technologies Lab at Tampere, added, "In this paper, we demonstrate that gambling-related problems cluster within families and close relationships in ways similar to alcohol and other substance-related harms. This is not just about individual behavior but about shared environments, stressors and social dynamics. "Emphasizing that gambling harms operate in ways comparable to substance-related harms feels both accurate and important for public understanding." What sets this study apart This study stands out for its focus on how family and peer relationships shape gambling behavior in adulthood. Much of the existing research has centered on risk and protective factors during childhood and adolescence, leaving adult social dynamics comparatively underexplored. Also, most previous research on gambling has been cross sectional, meaning it has captured only a single point in time rather than following people over a sustained period, making it difficult to identify how gambling behaviors and their social impacts develop or shift.