Online Gambling is one of the fastest growing forms of gambling globally. It offers an easy way to bet on sports events, play online casino games or try your luck at lottery games and scratch cards. Many states have changed their laws on the subject and allow regulated sites to operate legally within their borders. Some operators offer Responsible Gaming tools like deposit limits, time limits and self-exclusion periods to help you stay in control and avoid issues.

Although the phenomenon of online gambling is booming, there is still little knowledge about risk and protective factors in comparison with offline gambling. This article aims to investigate the current state of knowledge on the topic in order to identify gaps in research and areas for future study. To achieve this goal, a systematic literature review was conducted. The search was limited to peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2020. The PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) search strategy was used to select and analyse the included papers.

The results of the review indicate that the most common risk factor is impulsivity. This trait is most often associated with online problematic gambling, as well as with a dysfunctional personality. Other important predictors are social and environmental influences. In particular, the university context seems to increase the probability of online gambling and its behavioural consequences (Mihaylova et al., 2013).

The impact of online gambling on psychological well-being has only rarely been investigated. However, Gainsbury et al. (2014) reports that chasing losses is more frequent in online gamblers than in land-based ones.