Responsible Gambling

This stakeholder suggests that any interaction with existing, prospective, or former customers falls within the scope of responsible gambling. The responsible gambling strategy determines how responsibility is shared between customers and gambling operators and assigns to the customer adequate intervention options based on the entirety of available information on his or her ability to make responsible decisions. The author argues that responsible gambling activities should aim to intervene as early as possible and as little as necessary, leaving as much responsibility with the consumer as viable. Eventually, operators cannot—in some cases—avoid accepting the full responsibility and must impose restrictions even against the volition of the consumer. Even though the customer might have the final decision on whether and to what extent to gamble, operators have the final decision—based on their own risk-management and well-documented observations—whether to continue serving the customer to avoid taking part in continued self-harm. This process must, however, be conducted in a transparent and nondiscriminatory manner.

Is "pop-up" messaging in online slot machine gambling effective as a responsible gambling strategy?

Certain gambling operators now provide social responsibility tools to help players gamble more responsibly. One such innovation is the use of pop-up messages that aim to give feedback to the players about the time and money they have thus far spent gambling. Most studies of this innovation have been conducted in laboratory settings, and although controlled studies are indeed more reliable than real-world studies, the non-ecological validity of laboratory studies is still an issue. This study investigated the effects of a slot machine pop-up message in a real gambling environment by comparing the behavioural tracking data of two representative random samples of 400,000 gambling sessions before and after the pop-up message was introduced. The study comprised approximately 200,000 gamblers. The results indicated that, following the viewing of a pop-up message after 1000 consecutive gambles on an online slot machine game, nine times more gamblers ceased their gambling session than did those gamblers who had not viewed the message. The data suggest that pop-up messages can influence a small number of gamblers to cease their playing session, and that pop-ups appear to be another potentially helpful social responsibility tool in reducing excessive play within session.

The Role of Responsible Gambling Strategy in Forming Behavioral Intention

By examining the perception of a responsible gambling strategy, this study developed an extended model of goal-directed behavior (EMGB) with respect to the behavioral intentions of casino visitors. The results of the EMGB, which uses structural equation modeling, indicate that desire had the strongest relationship with casino visitors’ intention to gamble, followed by positive anticipated emotion, perceived behavioral control, perceptions of a responsible gambling strategy, negative anticipated emotion, and attitude. The perception of a responsible gambling strategy was also a significant predictor of both desire and behavioral intention, as casino visitors had positive perceptions of casinos that implemented responsible gambling strategies. Casino managers should consider a responsible gambling strategy as an important long-term business activity to increase casino visitor’s intention to gamble.