Account-Based Gambling Research

The article shares the opportunities that Internet gambling opens for academic research. Particularly, it illustrates how account-based reporting could be utilized by researchers in analyzing players' actual behavior. While previous research was based on self-reporting, an account-based approach could expand the knowledge of actual behavior, as well as provide options for precise evaluations of interventions on both individual and big data levels. The key findings of this research could become a starting point for identifying trends in the field of sports betting.

Authors of this review:

Nikita Goncharenko

Date of Publication:

12/06/2022

Academic Reference:

Shaffer, H. Peller, A., LaPlante, D., and Nelson, S. (2010). Toward a paradigm shift in Internet gambling research: From opinion and self-report to actual behavior. Addiction Research and Theory. 18. 270-283.

Tags:sports gambling data analytics

Key Ideas

Conventional wisdom, professional opinions, and side interests drive policymakers to create guidelines and rules for Internet gambling.

The key driver for excessive betting is the structural characteristics of Internet gambling: rapid event frequency and high payout ratio.

The positive side of self-reported studies is describing attitudes, intentions, and motivations.

The negative side of self-reported studies includes self-selected participation and low response rates. That is in addition to the main problem: lack of actual behavior, which could be visible from account-based reporting

The main negative sides of self-reported studies are bias mistakes, which include memory errors, self-presentation strategies, simple miscomprehension, and phrasing of survey questions.

Account-based reporting provides an evidence-based foundation for the study.

Account-based reporting also allows measurement opportunities for interventions.

For the best part, Account-based reporting reports precisely individual- and population-level characteristics of Internet gambling.

When analyzing data, it is beneficiary to differentiate samples based on risk and resilience.

The account-based report could be used in addition to self-reported studies to support/reject pre-concluded assumptions.

Citations

Surprisingly, "Internet gamblers report preferring the convenience of Internet gambling on land-based casinos."

Account-based reporting holds great potential: "It might be possible to identify high risk gamblers early in their involvement with Internet gambling because all of their activities can be monitored and tracked."

"subscribers [of Bwin] lost more money on sports gambling than casino gambling. This is not because casino has greater losses. In fact, the house odds for casino play are less than half the house cut on sports gambling. The greater aggregate is because casino betting is more rapid cycling and people place more bets."

Hypothesis for my research 1: "Subscribers placed fewer bets and lost less money when placing live-action bets."

Hypothesis for my research 2: "Women bet on more days and over a shorter period of time."

Hypothesis for my research 3: "studies evaluating the use of limit setting techniques ... provide opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of various hard reduction techniques."

Serious limitations: 1) "Subscribers might be engaging in Internet gambling on multiple sites ... or other gambling venues" 2) "no data about subscribers' income"

Future research could focus on: "Research examining the psychological characteristics of subscribers in more details (e.g., functionality measures, mood)"