The relationship between perceived parental knowledge and adolescent gambling

This study revisits and extends prior evidence on the role of adolescents’ perceived parental knowledge—how much they believe their parents know about their whereabouts and companions—in reducing gambling through attitudes and peer norms. Using two waves of the nationally representative survey ESPAD® Italia (2022-23; N = 24,631), we re-examine this relationship after major societal and digital shifts, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the expansion of online gambling platforms. Our results confirm that higher perceived parental knowledge is associated with lower gambling frequency, both directly and indirectly via increasing risk perception of gambling and decreasing descriptive norms on gambling shared with friends. Extending earlier work, we also test adolescents’ awareness of legal gambling age limits as an additional normative pathway, examine heterogeneity by gender and legal gambling status, and analyze online gambling frequency. The results are robust across all specifications, suggesting that, even in evolving technological and social contexts, perceived parental knowledge continues to play an important role in buffering adolescents’ gambling.