Understanding the key factors affecting gambling strategy effectiveness is paramount for effective sports betting. These include emotional self-regulation, cognitive bias awareness, and regular decision-making exercises.
This qualitative research explores the self-control strategies employed by people who gamble to restrict frequency, time and money spent gambling. Furthermore, interviews were used to investigate how substance use might alter these self-control strategies.
Contextual factors
While gambling research has predominantly been limited to financial expenditure, more must be done regarding other aspects of self-control strategies that influence people. These may include contexts in which they develop, their effectiveness and adherence, impacts on gambling-related harms and impact analysis; all important components for creating policies and programs to combat gambling harms.
Studies on digital gambling marketing have revealed one key finding: it uses various contextual factors to promote betting practices. These typically revolve around sociocultural constructs such as mateship, success and status as well as hedonism – characteristics often manifest themselves through advertising campaigns targeting young men for sports betting, poker or bingo sites.
Although contextual factors may be difficult to manage, public health initiatives may help. Education about effective ways to restrict gambling time and frequency is crucial.
Behavioral factors
Gambling is an inherently social activity that is affected by many variables. Behavioral economics provides valuable insights into the heuristics and biases that shape behavior, yet must be combined with other interventions to minimize gambling-related harms; for instance, nudging individuals to act in ways they themselves believe will benefit can have tremendous benefits.
Owing to the rise of online gaming and sports betting platforms, very little research has been conducted on their impact on children’s gambling consumption intentions. This review seeks to identify strategies which might influence children’s gambling behaviour and develop effective interventions.
Findings from this review suggest that using gamification, gambling inducements promotion, sports and cultural themes and gamification effectively shape children’s gambling attitudes and consumption intentions. Yet several gaps still remain in literature on this topic and this review seeks to fill them through conducting further research in this area.
Financial factors
Gambling’s effect on individuals, families and communities has become an urgent public health concern. While considerable research has been done into some forms of land-based gambling, more is known about digital gaming’s effects – including sports betting platforms online as well as social networking services that use digital gaming products as marketing platforms.
This study sought to investigate people’s perceptions regarding the effectiveness of self-control strategies in limiting gambling expenditure. 56 people who gamble participated in nine focus groups and five individual interviews held across Montreal, Calgary, and Toronto; participants were asked about their strategies for restricting money spent gambling as well as whether or not these techniques worked for them as well as any explanation as to why or why not they worked.
As the gambling industry innovates and creates new forms of games, legislators must recognize a growing cultural disconnect between an increasingly sophisticated gambling landscape that supports sophisticated marketing strategies and policies designed to reduce or prevent gambling-related harm – something particularly crucial when considering sports betting.
Social factors
Though most gambling research focuses on individual behavior, less attention has been paid to social influences on it. One such factor is social practices – referring to all activities people perform throughout the day that influence it – which may provide useful insight into gambling research because it suggests individuals’ motivations to gamble may be determined by environments in which they engage.
Sports betting is often promoted alongside social practices such as socialising and watching sport, which can have an enormously powerful effect on young men who are the primary audience for most online gambling marketing strategies. Advertisements usually use appeals that emphasize friendship, winning/success, hedonism or sexuality to reach this demographic.
There are various approaches available to combat digital gambling marketing. These include restricting spaces and places where gambling occurs; public discourse campaigns challenging perceptions that gambling is normalized; harm reduction approaches which encourage responsible gambling; and restricting spaces and places where it occurs.