Politicians, health officials, and scholars have argued that loot boxes (virtual items that can be redeemed to receive randomly selected other virtual items) in video games function as a type of gambling, and research has shown that loot box purchasing is correlated with gambling behaviors. Whether loot box purchasing shares other characteristics with gambling such as risk and protective factors, however, has not been explored empirically. This study uses data from large, random samples of American youth to regress both gambling and loot box purchasing (as well as purchasing other downloadable content) on previously established risk and protective factors of gambling. Results suggest that, aside from gender differences, loot boxes share little in common with traditional forms of gambling. The data also indicate that youth gamers are less likely to have purchased loot boxes in comparison to previously estimated adult gamer prevalence rates.

政治家，卫生官员和学者认为，视频游戏中的战利品箱（可以兑换成虚拟物品，以接收随机选择的其他虚拟物品）是一种赌博，并且研究表明，战利品购买与赌博行为相关。战利品购买是否与赌博具有其他特征，例如风险和保护因素，但是，还没有从经验上进行探索。这项研究使用来自美国青少年的大量随机样本中的数据，对先前确定的赌博风险和保护因素进行了赌博和战利品购买（以及购买其他可下载内容）的回归分析。结果表明，除性别差异外，战利品盒与传统赌博形式几乎没有共同点。