Gambling is a popular leisure time activity in most countries, but this activity has major social and economic impacts that affect not only the gamblers themselves, but their significant others and society at large. It is important to understand these impacts in order to make the right decisions and policy choices that will minimize costs and maximize benefits.
While most individuals participate in gambling as an enjoyable social activity, a small group of people become too seriously involved with gambling to the point where it has negative personal, family and financial effects. Similarly, many people have good intentions when they start to gamble but find themselves losing control of their gambling habits and continue to gamble despite the resulting consequences. These individuals are referred to as problem gamblers.
The impact of gambling can be divided into classes of negative and positive; costs and benefits. The costs are categorized into three classes of impact: financial, labor and health/wellbeing, and community/society level. The financial impacts are associated with changes in gambling revenues and the indirect economic impact of tourists and infrastructure costs. The labor and health/wellbeing impacts are associated with gambling related changes in job loss, work performance and inability to work. These impacts also include health and well-being changes such as depression, stress and anxiety.
The societal/community level impacts are those that influence a wider population of people and can be difficult to measure. These can be the long-term effects of gambling on the quality of life and a sense of belonging, as well as the cost to police forces for criminal investigations and imprisonment associated with problem gamblers. These types of impacts are often overlooked in economic costing studies because they are difficult to quantify. A common methodological approach to measuring the societal costs and benefits of gambling is the public health model. This is an important framework that can help researchers, practitioners and decision makers in comparing the costs and benefits of different gambling policies. This model has the potential to provide a foundation for creating common methodology for conducting gambling impact studies. However, more research is required to determine the best way to measure the various dimensions of gambling’s costs and benefits. In addition, there is a need to identify which of the impacts are most likely to be social or non-monetary in nature. This will allow the inclusion of these impacts in future gambling impact assessment models. This will ensure that all the positive and negative impacts of gambling are considered, rather than focusing solely on pathological or problem gambling.