It is well known that equilibrium problems are very important mathematical models and are closely related with fixed point problems, variational inequalities, and Nash equilibrium problems. Gap functions and error bounds which play a vital role in algorithms design, are two much-addressed topics of vector equilibrium problems. This paper is devoted to studying the scalar-valued gap functions and error bounds for the generalized mixed vector equilibrium problem (GMVE). First, a scalar gap function for (GMVE) is proposed without any scalarization methods, and then error bounds of (GMVE) are established in terms of the gap function. As applications, error bounds for generalized vector variational inequalities and vector variational inequalities are derived, respectively. The main results obtained are new and improve corresponding results of Charitha and Dutta (Pac. J. Optim. 6:497-510, 2010) and Sun and Chai (Optim. Lett. 8:1663-1673, 2014).