Abstract

This study aimed to understand the actual gambling status of adolescents on probation, and also to explore the relation with gambling problem focusing on the peer stress and loneliness out of the psychosocial variables having effects on the gambling addiction. For this, a survey was conducted targeting total 274 adolescents in 18 probation offices in the whole nation, and total 274 questionnaires were used for the analysis. The statistical analysis methods mainly used were the difference verification, correlation analysis, and regression analysis. In the results of this study, the 65% of adolescents on probation experienced gambling, including the speculative acts prohibited on adolescents such as the purchase of race ticket(1.8%), and the purchase of on/offline lottery ticket(21.9%). Especially, the rate of experiencing the online illegal gambling like casino was relatively high(14.6%). In the results of analyzing the gambling addiction level, the 17% of adolescents on probation were the dangerous or problematic gamblers. Also, in the results of analyzing the mediating effects of loneliness on the effects of peer stress on the gambling addiction, the loneliness significantly partially-mediated the relationship between peer stress and gambling addiction. In other words, when experiencing the peer stress, they felt lonely, which was led to the increase of gambling addiction.