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Instant Gratification Behavior Among Gambling Individuals in Uganda

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Abstract

Gambling has had mixed reactions over the years as a positive economic activity and as a negative action that leads to addiction. The purpose of the study is to examine whether the level of income and nature of employment explain the actual instant gratification behavior among bettors in Uganda. This study adopted a cross-sectional quantitative research design. Data was collected from 257 bettors in 26 betting firms, and a census survey was found appropriate to achieve a response rate of 98%. The research findings indicate that low-income earners are more likely to engage in sports betting. Secondly, individuals with jobs where they have too much free time and inadequate supervision are most likely to participate in sports betting. We, therefore, recommend that both private and public organizations should be concerned about the impact of sports betting on their performance and employees. Most entities don’t have gambling policies, and sports betting has a negative impact, for example, in terms of labor productivity and well-being of the employees; hence organizations need to develop clear anti-gambling policies at the workplace. Our study finds that the youth are the most gambling group in the country; specific gambling pieces of training and support services should be developed and organized for the child to increase the awareness of the impact of sports betting on their lives. Finally, there is a need to improve on the saving culture of Ugandans in addition to the revision of the minimum wage level for the workers in the country, and also introducing a weekly payment system would help to manage the betting behavior. In this study, Betting firms from one of the divisions Kampala Central Business District were studied, i.e., Nakawa. Yet, it would be better to cover all the divisions of Kampala; hence future studies should focus on all the divisions and may even study all the betting firms in the entire country. A self-administered questionnaire with close-ended questions was used to collect data from the field. However, this might have limited the amount of information collected from the respondents. Therefore, future studies should employ other methods, such as an interview guide.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Procurement and Logistics Management, Makerere University Business School, Kampala, Uganda

    Rogers Matama & Musa Mbago

  2. Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

    Pascal Ngoboka

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  1. Rogers Matama
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  2. Musa Mbago
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Correspondence to Musa Mbago.

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Matama, R., Mbago, M. & Ngoboka, P. Instant Gratification Behavior Among Gambling Individuals in Uganda. J Gambl Stud 37, 551–567 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-020-09973-y

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