Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Retention and Relapse in Gambling Self-help Communities on Reddit

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Social Informatics (SocInfo 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13618))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Problem gambling endangers the mental health and financial stability of those affected. Individuals who are trying to overcome this problematic behavior often seek support in self-help groups, whether offline or online. Although online gambling self-help groups have become increasingly prominent in recent years, research is still needed to fully understand the social interactions and effectiveness of this medium. In this paper, we analyze behavior of problem gamblers in two gambling self-help communities on Reddit. In particular, following social impact theory, we quantify the strength, frequency, and promptness of users’ social interactions and measure their effects on problem gamblers’ retention in the community, as well as on their relapse to gambling. Firstly, we find that the magnitude of the community response, and a higher response from users who currently sustain prolonged gambling-free periods are positively associated with retention in the community. Secondly, our relapse analysis indicates that users who engage more strongly in discussions following their own submissions have a lower risk of gambling relapse. We believe that our findings provide useful insights on how to improve support for problem gamblers in online self-help communities.

N. Hopfgartner and T. Ruprechter—Contributed equally.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/.

  2. 2.

    https://gitlab.tugraz.at/3B57777CAD304A73/reddit-gambling.

  3. 3.

    From: statista.com/statistics/1125159/reddit-us-app-users-age,

    statista.com/statistics/1255182/distribution-of-users-on-reddit-worldwide-gender,

    statista.com/statistics/325144/reddit-global-active-user-distribution.

References

  1. Auer, M., Hopfgartner, N., Griffiths, M.D.: An empirical study of the effect of voluntary limit-setting on gamblers’ loyalty using behavioural tracking data. Int. J. Mental Health Addict. 19, 1939–1950 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Auer, M., Hopfgartner, N., Griffiths, M.D.: The effects of voluntary deposit limit-setting on long-term online gambling expenditure. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Networking 23(2), 113–118 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Balsamo, D., Bajardi, P., Panisson, A.: Firsthand opiates abuse on social media: monitoring geospatial patterns of interest through a digital cohort. In: The World Wide Web Conference, pp. 2572–2579 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Basile, V., Cauteruccio, F., Terracina, G.: How dramatic events can affect emotionality in social posting: the impact of Covid-19 on Reddit. Future Internet 13(2), 29 (2021)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Baumgartner, J., Zannettou, S., Keegan, B., Squire, M., Blackburn, J.: The pushshift reddit dataset. In: Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, vol. 14, pp. 830–839 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bernhard, B.J., Dickens, D.R., Shapiro, P.D.: Gambling alone? A study of solitary and social gambling in America. UNLV Gaming Res. Rev. J. 11(2), 1 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bradburn, M.J., Clark, T.G., Love, S.B., Altman, D.G.: Survival analysis part III: multivariate data analysis - choosing a model and assessing its adequacy and fit. Br. J. Cancer 89(4), 605–611 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bjc.6601120

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Clark, T.G., Altman, D.G.: Developing a prognostic model in the presence of missing data: an ovarian cancer case study. J. Clin. Epidemiol. 56(1), 28–37 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Clark, T.G., Bradburn, M.J., Love, S.B., Altman, D.G.: Survival analysis part i: basic concepts and first analyses. Br. J. Cancer 89(2), 232–238 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Díaz, A., Pérez, L.: Online gambling-related harm: findings from the study on the prevalence, behavior and characteristics of gamblers in Spain. J. Gambl. Stud. 37(2), 599–607 (2021)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Dowling, N.A., Suomi, A., Jackson, A.C., Lavis, T.: Problem gambling family impacts: development of the problem gambling family impact scale. J. Gambl. Stud. 32(3), 935–955 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Erevik, E.K., Pallesen, S., Mohn, M., Aspeland, T., Vedaa, Ø., Torsheim, T.: The Norwegian remote intervention programme for problem gambling: short-and long-term outcomes. Nordic Stud. Alcohol Drugs 37(4), 365–383 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Eysenbach, G., Powell, J., Englesakis, M., Rizo, C., Stern, A.: Health related virtual communities and electronic support groups: systematic review of the effects of online peer to peer interactions. BMJ 328(7449), 1166 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Hopfgartner, N., Auer, M., Santos, T., Helic, D., Griffiths, M.D.: The effect of mandatory play breaks on subsequent gambling behavior among Norwegian online sports betting, slots and bingo players: a large-scale real world study. J. Gambl. Stud. 38, 737–752 (2021)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Hutto, C., Gilbert, E.: VADER: a parsimonious rule-based model for sentiment analysis of social media text. In: Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, vol. 8, pp. 216–225 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Jonsson, J., Hodgins, D.C., Munck, I., Carlbring, P.: Reaching out to big losers leads to sustained reductions in gambling over 1 year: a randomized controlled trial of brief motivational contact. Addiction 115(8), 1522–1531 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Kaakinen, M., Oksanen, A., Sirola, A., Savolainen, I., Garcia, D.: Emotions in online gambling communities: a multilevel sentiment analysis. In: Meiselwitz, G. (ed.) HCII 2020. LNCS, vol. 12194, pp. 542–550. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49570-1_38

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Latané, B.: The psychology of social impact. Am. Psychol. 36(4), 343 (1981)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Low, D.M., Rumker, L., Talkar, T., Torous, J., Cecchi, G., Ghosh, S.S.: Natural language processing reveals vulnerable mental health support groups and heightened health anxiety on reddit during Covid-19: observational study. J. Med. Internet Res. 22(10), e22635 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Lu, J., Sridhar, S., Pandey, R., Hasan, M.A., Mohler, G.: Investigate transitions into drug addiction through text mining of Reddit data. In: Proceedings of the 25th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining, pp. 2367–2375 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Luquiens, A., Dugravot, A., Panjo, H., Benyamina, A., Gaïffas, S., Bacry, E.: Self-exclusion among online poker gamblers: effects on expenditure in time and money as compared to matched controls. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 16(22), 4399 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. McNeilly, D.P., Burke, W.J.: Gambling as a social activity of older adults. Int. J. Aging Human Dev. 52(1), 19–28 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Mohammad, S.M.: Obtaining reliable human ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance for 20,000 English words. In: ACL 2018–56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference (Long Papers), vol. 1, pp. 174–184 (2018). https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/p18-1017

  24. Nagelkerke, N.J., et al.: A note on a general definition of the coefficient of determination. Biometrika 78(3), 691–692 (1991)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  25. Pellert, M., Schweighofer, S., Garcia, D.: The individual dynamics of affective expression on social media. EPJ Data Sci. 9(1), 1–14 (2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0219-3

  26. Raban, D.R., Moldovan, M., Jones, Q.: An empirical study of critical mass and online community survival. In: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 71–80 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Schuler, A., et al.: Gamblers anonymous as a recovery pathway: a scoping review. J. Gambl. Stud. 32(4), 1261–1278 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Sharma, A., Choudhury, M., Althoff, T., Sharma, A.: Engagement patterns of peer-to-peer interactions on mental health platforms. In: Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, vol. 14, pp. 614–625 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Singer, P., Flöck, F., Meinhart, C., Zeitfogel, E., Strohmaier, M.: Evolution of reddit: from the front page of the internet to a self-referential community? In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 517–522 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Syvertsen, A., Erevik, E.K., Mentzoni, R.A., Pallesen, S.: Gambling addiction Norway-experiences among members of a Norwegian self-help group for problem gambling. Int. Gambl. Stud. 20(2), 246–261 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Tan, C.: Tracing community genealogy: how new communities emerge from the old. In: Twelfth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Warriner, A.B., Kuperman, V., Brysbaert, M.: Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas. Behav. Res. Methods 45(4), 1191–1207 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank David Garcia for his helpful feedback and discussion on this topic. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments, which improved this work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Niklas Hopfgartner, Thorsten Ruprechter & Denis Helic

Authors
  1. Niklas Hopfgartner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Thorsten Ruprechter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Denis Helic
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Niklas Hopfgartner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universität Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz, Germany

    Frank Hopfgartner

  2. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Kokil Jaidka

  3. GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, Cologne, Germany

    Philipp Mayr

  4. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Joemon Jose

  5. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Jan Breitsohl

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Hopfgartner, N., Ruprechter, T., Helic, D. (2022). Retention and Relapse in Gambling Self-help Communities on Reddit. In: Hopfgartner, F., Jaidka, K., Mayr, P., Jose, J., Breitsohl, J. (eds) Social Informatics. SocInfo 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13618. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19097-1_19

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19097-1_19

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-19096-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-19097-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation