Gambling Harms Research Likely to Extend, Study Finds

21 September 2026

A rising tide of policy attention on gambling harms among young adults is exposing the incomplete and uneven state of the current evidence base. Multiple recent reviews and policy papers identify the same core gaps in the gambling-harms research field: weak longitudinal evidence, inconsistent and sometimes inappropriate measurement, and limited understanding of harms for different subgroups and age groups.

Gaps Remain Despite Increased Attention

UK and international reviews alike highlight how incomplete the gambling-harms evidence base remains, despite the recent surge in regulatory focus. A major UK government review of gambling harms in 2023 found a "striking lack" of studies quantifying the financial, relationship, employment and educational harms from gambling. It also noted "conceptual gaps" and "significant limitations" in defining and measuring gambling-related harm.

A 2022 review of adolescent gambling research similarly found validity problems with measures adapted from adult populations -- measures that may misread age-normative experimentation as clinically significant harm. The same review said the field still struggles to infer causality and lacks sufficient longitudinal evidence on how gambling behaviours and risks develop over time for young people.

Those concerns are bolstered by a 2023 report suggesting that GambleAware-funded research from 2018 to 2023 heavily shaped one of the major recent syntheses of evidence, even though the evidence base remains very thin. The report also noted that there is still "no robust longitudinal data" tracking how different gambling behaviours, risks and harms develop over time.

Publicly funded bodies in the UK and the US are all increasing their gambling-harm research investment, but evidence is usually insufficient to guide regulators.

Evidence Gap Puts Young Adults at Risk

Even though increasingly controlling the attention of policymakers and researchers, young adults are an underserved part of the gambling-harms evidence base. Concerns about the evidence for adolescent gambling harms have been clear since at least 2021, with reviews in the Journal of Gambling Studies finding that many tools adapted from adult populations misread age-normative gambling experimentation as problematic behaviour.

But even though young adults are the group most at risk from gambling-harms, they may be underrepresented in the research. A recent UK policy paper noted a growing focus on young adults -- but also warned that the evidence may not reflect the full extent of the problem.

The same report said that young people are also underrepresented in long-term, longitudinal studies that could better explain how gambling harms progress. A government needs assessment in Hartlepool in 2022 found that prevalence data for gambling harms in that English town are "very limited", with "no consistent collection system or treatment data."

One key research gap is even wider -- that is, the dearth of longitudinal studies comparing gambling harms across age groups. Issues like financial risk may affect young adults more than other age groups. But without robust studies comparing risk and harms at different life stages, policy interventions may inadvertently privilege some groups over others.

Key Questions Still Unanswered

Increased funding from governments and regulators is being allocated to answering some of the key unknowns in gambling harms. A £10-million research centre launched in 2023 is led by a consortium of British universities, including King's College London and the University of Glasgow, and is tasked with addressing gaps in the gambling-harms evidence base. In the US, a separate bipartisan federal gambling-research bill was introduced last year to study gambling addiction.

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But major continuing gaps in what the evidence base will tell policymakers are still expected. According to a 2023 review of gambling-harms frameworks, scholars will need to shift their focus to the social and commercial determinants of gambling harm.

Numerous papers have also expressed the need for more rigorous studies of the effects of legal and regulatory responses, and also for better measurement of online gambling harms. And without robust longitudinal data, the field may continue to miss the natural experiment it most needs.

A 2023 policy review in the UK similarly found a general lack of scholarship on how to measure gambling-related harm. Without that scholarship in place, the review found, scholars and policymakers are still struggling to pinpoint what exactly constitutes gambling-related harm, and therefore who might be affected.

Active Protection and Interventions Need More Data

Better measurement of gambling harms is one key area where experts are still guiding regulators' hands from the data. For example, a 2021 review of gambling-harm minimisation tools identified a clear gap in studies assessing the effectiveness of both active and passive consumer-protection measures. Similarly, a review of legal and regulatory gambling responses found numerous gaps: for example, a lack of studies examining the effects of advertising restrictions and preventing harms.

Even treatment remains a key area for further research. The 2020 report by the Gambling Research Exchange Ontario (GREO) identified the evidence base for harm-prevention and education measures as both thin and low-quality. And The Lancet Public Health found that ongoing treatment and support after screening interventions were entirely missing from some high-level reviews of gambling-harms evidence.

The key game-changing element may be a shift in how gambling-related harms are defined and measured. No single definition exists and no single metric has yet emerged.

The GREO review called particular attention to the lack of scholarship on safer-betting messaging, while a 2021 review of gambling-harms frameworks concluded that scholars and policymakers might need to expand the definition of gambling-related harm to place more attention on the social and commercial determinants of gambling harms.

But the sticking point remains the lack of robustness in the evidence. With research funding from both UK regulators and US lawmakers increasing, the next decade may see robust new data on the who, when, how and why of gambling harms -- ongoing data that can help guide regulators and treatment providers in preventing and mitigating that harm.