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The prevalence and nature of gambling and problem gambling in South Korea

Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology volume 48, pages 821–834 (2013)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

To establish the current prevalence of gambling and problem gambling in South Korea and to determine the associated demographic and game play patterns.

Methods

Administration of a gambling survey over the phone to 4,000 randomly selected South Korean adults (19+), supplemented by an online survey of 4,330 members of a South Korean online panel.

Results

The past year prevalence of gambling among South Korean adults was 41.8 %. The past year engagement in individual forms of gambling was 36.2 % for lotteries and instant lotteries; 12.0 % for social gambling; 2.3 % for sports betting; 1.5 % for casino gambling; 1.5 % for internet gambling; and 1.1 % for horse, bicycle, or motor boat betting. The past year prevalence of problem gambling was 0.5 %. Logistic regression identified the best predictors of problem gambling to be: having a greater number of gambling fallacies; gambling on the internet; betting on horses, bicycling, or motor boat racing; social gambling; male gender; mental health problems; sports betting; motivation for gambling (gambling to escape); casino gambling; and lower income.

Conclusions

The past year prevalence of gambling (41.8 %) and problem gambling (0.5 %) in South Korea is low compared to other countries, especially relative to other Asian jurisdictions. This relatively low prevalence of gambling is likely related to the very strong negative attitudes toward it, the low participation by females, and restricted access. The low prevalence of problem gambling is likely related to the relatively low prevalence of gambling and restricted access to continuous forms of gambling. The variables that are predictive of problem gambling in South Korea are quite similar to those found in other countries with a couple of important differences.

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Notes

  1. Problem gambling is defined as having difficulties limiting money and/or time spent on gambling which leads to adverse consequences for the gambler, others, or for the community [1]. It includes ‘pathological gambling’ (equivalent to severe problem gambling) that is characterized by severe difficulties in controlling gambling behaviour leading to serious adverse consequences.

  2. 58.3 % of the 14.9 million housing units in South Korea in 2010 were apartments [9].

  3. Most of this expansion has occurred in Macau and Singapore. In 2007 Macau surpassed the Las Vegas strip in annual gambling revenue and now has revenues that are five times higher.

  4. Questionnaires that are introduced as ‘gambling surveys’ produce artifactually high prevalence rates of gambling and problem gambling due to higher participation rates of gamblers and higher refusal rates of non-gamblers [20, 22].

  5. Although South Korea has one of the highest rates of Internet use in the world, 23 % still did not use the Internet in 2008, with nonuse being disproportionately higher in people over 60 [28].

  6. With financial incentives being the main reported reason for participation [29]. (This motivation may make these panels suitable for consumer market research but perhaps not for academic studies).

  7. At the time of the survey, there were 490,000 South Korean members of the Asia Panel. Embrain recruits panelists via phone solicitation, email solicitation, self-referrals, recommendation by other panel members, and street recruitment.

  8. The international average was derived from a sample of 8,330 people from 105 countries in 2007, with the majority of these people being from North America [40, 41].

  9. For the online sample, the proportion of total reported gambling expenditure accounted for by CPGI 5+ problem gamblers was 63.9 % for the unwinsorized sample and 31.1 % for the winsorized sample.

  10. With such a low prevalence rate, failure to overweight the problem gamblers leads to analytic solutions that maximize classification accuracy by identifying everyone as a non-problem gambler.

  11. These negative attitudes lends credence to the suggestion made in the Introduction that gambling participation may be a stigmatized activity in South Korea, and that face-to-face administration may be a less optimal administration format relative to telephone administration.

  12. Most Westerners ‘know’ this, even if their gambling behaviour is not consistent with this knowledge.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Alberta Gambling Research Institute for their financial support of this study. In addition, we are grateful to the staff at Embrain for their skillful administration of the surveys, and to our Research Assistant, Hyemi Lee for her thorough data cleaning of the SPSS files.

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Affiliations

  1. Alberta Gambling Research Institute and Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, T1K 3M4, Canada

    Robert J. Williams

  2. College of Hotel and Tourism, Kyung Hee University, 1, Hoegi-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, 130-701, South Korea

    Choong-Ki Lee

  3. 229 C. N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    Ki Joon Back

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  1. Robert J. Williams
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  2. Choong-Ki Lee
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Correspondence to Robert J. Williams.

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Williams, R.J., Lee, CK. & Back, K.J. The prevalence and nature of gambling and problem gambling in South Korea. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 48, 821–834 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-012-0580-z

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Keywords

  • Gambling
  • Prevalence
  • South Korea
  • Problem gambling