Is lottery playing always harmful? Development of the Lottery Playing Health Scale

We developed a multidimensional measure of lottery playing health, simultaneously considering the positive and negative perspectives of playing the lottery. Participants were 4,521 sports lottery players. The final version of the Lottery Playing Health Scale (LPHS) comprised 17 items divided across 5 factors: enjoyable experience, favorable socialization, rational control, negative mood, and social harm. The LPHS showed good psychometric properties, including level of fit to the data, discriminant validity, and reliability. Several lottery player characteristics (i.e., age, perceived risk, and urge to play) were found to be significant predictors of players' LPHS scores. This study represents an initial effort to understand the multidimensional effects of lottery playing on health.