Experimental evidence on measures to protect consumers of online gambling services

Online gambling has grown rapidly in recent decades due to increased accessibility and availability. This article reports the results of a behavioral experiment conducted in a laboratory (N=522) and an online experiment administered in seven European countries (N=5997). The experiments examined the effectiveness of a range of mainstream and also innovative protective interventions for online gambling. The rationale of the interventions was to disrupt both individuals’ mental processes and the affordances embedded in the human-machine system designed to maximize the time spent gambling and industry profits. Behavioral measures including stake size, speed of play and decision to stop playing or make further gambles were recorded. The results show that interventions addressing both individuals’ mental processes and the human-machine interaction are effective in reducing the stake size and in slowing down the pace of gambling. All other interventions directed at the level of the individual have no effect on behavior. The results show that traditional ‘nudges’ are not sufficient and structural features such as the affordances embedded by design into the online gambling machines must be addressed in order to effectively protect consumers of online gambling.