Compliance check of gambler and youth protection in German amusement arcades: a pilot study

Abstract

German gambling operators are required to identify problem gamblers at an early stage and exclude them from gambling on their premises. The main aim of this pilot study was to investigate the compliance of staff in Bremen’s amusement arcades. While visiting 29 of 111 amusement arcades, covert gamblers simulated signs of problematic gambling behaviour, arranged self-exclusions, monitored observance of the exclusion list and made fieldnotes about the staff’s reactions. The application of age checks was also tested. The findings showed that only in six cases (5%) did the staff adequately respond to evident signs of problematic gambling behaviour. Although 18 of 29 cases (62%) eventually resulted in self-exclusions or ban-like agreements, in some instances it was necessary to overcome major obstacles that emanated from the staff’s behaviour. During 15 subsequent follow-up visits, 13 banned mystery gamblers (87%) had no problems gambling on amusement-with-prizes (AWP) machines. Finally, just 26% of the 20- to 25-year-old mystery gamblers had their ID checked. The results indicate the necessity of regular external evaluations regarding the implementation of gambling harm-minimization measures in order to identify any shortcomings. In addition, the level of staff compliance may be increased by amending current legislation (e.g. by introducing a nationwide self-exclusion programme).

Keywords::

• responsible gambling
• problem gambling
• Germany
• harm minimization
• policy development

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the students of psychology from the University of Bremen who were involved in the experimental internship (Monday and Tuesday group, summer semester 2014) for their support in designing and implementing the study.

Conflicts of interest

Funding sources: The funding for this study was provided by Bremer Fachstelle Glücksspielsucht, a help centre for gambling addicts financed by the state of Bremen. The stakeholder had no input in planning the study, collecting and analysing the data or discussing the results.

Competing interests: In the past Dr Meyer has received financial support for gambling-related research projects from the German Research Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Health, several ministries of the federal states, the research fund of the University of Bremen and various gambling operators. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Constraints on publishing

The publication is based solely on the authors’ input. No constraints were imposed during the entire research process, including the publication of this manuscript.

Notes

A shorter version of this article was previously published in a German-speaking journal: Meyer, G., von Meduna, M., & Brosowski, T. (^a2015). Spieler- und Jugendschutz in Spielhallen: Ein Praxistest. Sucht, 61, 9–18. The republication was permitted by the original journal.

^1. Some arcade operators have voluntarily opted to set the minimum age at 21. However, there are no specific legal guidelines or regulations in respect of the enforcement of age restrictions or the content of staff training on the (early) detection of problematic gambling behaviour. Policies have been implemented in other jurisdictions in order to, inter alia, require staff to check the age of any customer who appears to be below the minimum age (e.g. in Quebec, Canada, access to casinos is restricted to persons of at least 18 years of age but all visitors appearing to be younger than 25 years will be asked to prove their age).

^2. Two hundred and sixty-three thousand AWP machines in more than 10,000 amusement arcades (and pubs) generated the highest revenue (EUR 4.37 billion in 2013) of all gambling products in Germany.

^3. It was not possible to draw the staff’s attention to (1) signs of great tension, (2) comments on high losses, (3) lies to relatives and (4) comments on loss of control on one occasion respectively because the staff were distracted by other visitors or were too focussed on playing on their smartphone/online; the reference parameter is therefore 28 cases instead of 29.

^4. In the following analyses, these two cases were treated as missing values because the test persons were not able to follow the study protocol as mentioned above.

^5. At the end of 2013 the national exclusion database contained 26,075 entries for exclusions in casinos; that is 1477 more than at the end of 2012.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gerhard Meyer

Gerhard Meyer is a professor of the Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research at the University of Bremen (Germany) and has been the principal investigator of several research projects dealing with problem gambling and delinquency, neuroendocrine response to casino gambling, brief intervention for problem gamblers and the addictive potential of different gambling forms. He also served as a consultant for national regulators as well as the gambling industry and acted as forensic expert witness in court cases.

Marc von Meduna

Marc von Meduna is a psychologist and attained his diploma in 2011 (University of Bremen, Germany). Currently he is working as a research assistant in the Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research at the University of Bremen. His work is mainly based on the empirical analysis of different gambling-related phenomena.

Tim Brosowski

Tim Brosowski is a psychologist and attained his diploma in 2011 (University of Bremen, Germany). Since the beginning of 2012, he has been working as a research assistant in the Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research at the University of Bremen. His research interests are related to gambling, excessive consumption behaviour, design of experiments, computational statistics, and large-scale data analyses.

Tobias Hayer

Tobias Hayer studied psychology at the University of Bremen (Germany). Since 2001 he has been a research assistant at the Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research (University of Bremen). He attained his PhD in 2012; his PhD thesis examined risk factors of adolescent problem gambling. He has been involved in several research projects that deal with different aspects of (problem) gambling. Further research interests include certain forms of problem behaviour in adolescence (e.g. bullying and school violence).