Responsible Gambling: Tool for Retention

Responsible gambling tools can be beneficial for gambling providers. The study at hand defines voluntarily chosen deposit limits to be a tool for players’ retention. As it shows, players tend to stay active longer when they voluntarily choose to set the deposit limit. That could be explained by players keeping control over their own gambling and yet, enjoying the process, which leads to longer participation in the gambling activity of a particular gambling provider. While setting the deposit limit voluntarily tends to promote retention, other factors (income level, other gambling websites usage, user experience, etc.) should be considered when drawing a conclusion on the topic.

Authors of this review:

Nikita Goncharenko

Date of Publication:

18/09/2022

Academic Reference:

Auer, Michael & Hopfgartner, Niklas & Griffiths, Mark. (2021). An Empirical Study of the Effect of Voluntary Limit-Setting on Gamblers’ Loyalty Using Behavioural Tracking Data. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. 19.

Tags:sports gambling data analytics

Key Ideas

Players who voluntarily choose to set deposit limits tend to be more loyal to a sports gambling operator.

One significant risk of online gambling comes from the electronic methods of payment, which can happen fast and are less evitable than when physical money is being spent. (Gainsbury et al. 2013; Griffiths et al. 2009; Wardle et al. 2011; Wood and Williams 2011)

The difference between self-perception and actual behavior exists in terms of gambling losses and frequency. (Braverman et al. 2014; Auer and Griffiths 2017)

A strange phenomenon was noticed within the study at hand, claiming that players who voluntarily set deposit limits tend to lose higher amounts of money gambling. That phenomenon is explained by the fact that players with voluntary-chosen deposit limits tend to be more loyal to the brand. Because of brand loyalty, these players tend to play longer and consequently lose higher amounts of money. The “play longer” in this context refers to players' retention as being active bettors over a long period.

One of the key components for customer satisfaction of the gambling provider's brand was found to be a corporate image. (Wu et al. 2014)

An interesting open-source software solution for data analysis was used in this study, called: r-project.org

8.3% of the database chosen for the study used a voluntary deposit limit. Interestingly, the older the user, the lower the chance that this user set a voluntary deposit limit.

Another study showed that only 6.5% of players set a deposit limit within the first 90 days after registration.

The results of the present study showed that older [NG: age] male [NG: gender] players who set the voluntary deposit limit were more active than those who did not set a voluntary deposit limit. However, setting a voluntary deposit limit does not promote inactive players to restart gambling.

While setting a voluntary deposit limit is one feature for player retention, other important factors should be evaluated, including income level, active accounts on different gambling websites, as well as simple experiences of winning/losing on a certain website.

Citations

"the present study found that relatively few gamblers set voluntary limits."

"From a business perspective, the implication is that gambling operators should try to get their players to utilize limit-setting features because it may increase long-term customer retention (and therefore 'lifetime customer value') while simultaneously providing protection against over-spending for their clientele."

External References

Auer, M., & Griffiths, M. D. (2017). Self-reported losses versus actual losses in online gambling: An empiricalstudy. Journal of Gambling Studies, 33,795-806.

Braverman, J., Tom, M. A., & Shaffer, H. J. (2014). Accuracy of self-reported versus actual online-gamblingwins and losses. Psychological Assessment, 26, 865-877.

Gainsbury, S., Russell, A., Hing, N., Wood, R., & Blaszczynski, A. (2013). The impact of internet gambling ongambling problems: A comparison of moderate-risk and problem internet and non-Internet gamblers.Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 27, 1092-1101.

Griffiths, M. D., Wardle, H., Orford, J., Sproston, K., & Erens, B. (2009). Sociodemographic correlates ofinternet gambling: Findings from the 2007 British gambling prevalence survey. CyberPsychology andBehavior, 12, 199-202.

Wardle, H., Moody, A., Griffiths, M., Orford, J., & Volberg, R. (2011). Defining the online gambler and patternsof behaviour integration: Evidence from the British gambling prevalence survey 2010. InternationalGambling Studies, 11, 339-356.

Wood, R., & Williams, R. (2011). A comparative profile of the internet gambler: Demographic characteristics,game play patterns, and problem gambling status. New Media & Society, 13, 1123-1141.

Wu, Y., Li, H., Gou, Q., & Gu, J. (2017). Supply chain models with corporate social responsibility. InternationalJournal of Production Research, 55(22), 6732-6759.