Reconsidering the roots, structure, and implications of gambling motives: An integrative approach

The present study identified Social, Financial, and Fun/thrill-related gambling motives factors, but also a fourth factor in which some positive and negative reinforcement-based motives were grouped into a single and broader Affect regulation factor. This Affect regulation factor shared variance both with BIS and BAS-related measures, and was the only direct predictor of disordered gambling symptoms. The Fun/thrill factor was directly related to frequency of participation in high-arousal, skill-based games, and all factors were related to participation in lower-arousal, chance games (with Social motives negatively predicting both participation in the latter and total severity). In the SEM model, measures of BIS/BAS sensitivity were connected to gambling behavior only through gambling motives. Based on measures of items’ specificity, a shortened Spanish scale (the brief Gambling Motives Inventory, bGMI) is proposed to assess gambling motives in accordance with the observed 4-factor structure.
This work is supported by a grant from the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación; Convocatoria 2017 de Proyectos I+D de Excelencia, Spain; co-funded by the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, FEDER, European Union), with reference number PSI2017-85488-P.