Gambling policy studies: a field that is growing in size and complexity

Background

Gambling policies take a variety of forms, and are concerned with many different kinds of gambling activities and situations. There is a growing need to produce knowledge about and govern specific forms of gambling. At the same time, gambling and adherent policies are becoming more global to their character. These trends are occasioned by multiple factors including a globalized economy; the rapid global growth of gambling industries; internet-based gambling and marketing; and, a need to study and act on issues that increasingly transcend national borders. In order to answer to cross-pressures, gambling policies must take a ‘particular, yet global’ character.

Increased rates of problem gambling and gambling harms have shown to be linked to the policies of governments. Despite evidence of correlation between availability and harm, many jurisdictions have increased both the availability and promotion of gambling. Almost all jurisdictions have some sort of interest in or dependency on the profit from gambling (Leitzel 2014; Dadayan 2016). Levels of harms correlate not only with level of regulation, but also tend to vary according to a logic underpinning the systemic balance between stakeholder revenues, on the one hand, and gambling-related societal costs, on the other. In view of the complex circumstances presented above, it has become clear that there is a great need for more research on gambling policy and governance as well as studies of the effects of different strategies and interventions. However, these are not the primary objects for the growing literature on gambling issues – rather, individualised cognitive and epidemiological endeavours still dominate this research field (Young 2013).

The initiative for this special issue of Addiction, Research and Theory arose from a growing awareness of such a need for a (possibly novel) collection of research focused on gambling policies. Systematic policy studies are under-represented, and thus far they have mostly described cases of collisions between various stakeholders’ interests. Gambling studies, especially those with any policy relevance, have largely emerged from the Anglosphere, and there is a lack of regional research. As with the lack of focus on systematic studies of policy, the editors seek to encourage this to change. Gambling policy – in its broadest sense – is an area that is homogeneous and poorly nuanced. Our aim with this special edition has been to gather studies from different parts of the world, and from a broad repertoire of perspectives, with a common focus on system and policy.

Consumer protection, and the legitimation of gambling

Gambling policies and regulation involve different aspects of gambling: criminal involvement, money laundering, the fairness of games and integrity of the operators and users. Still, one can say that an element of citizen or consumer protection underpin any initiative that articulates an aim of promoting well-being and minimizing social harms.

The area of consumer protection crosses over the policy field as a whole, spanning policies focusing on regulation on a structural level to particular measures focusing on harm reduction targeting the individual gambler. One of the most current and topical concerns across all countries relates to regulation of online environments. In their article on consumer protection in licensed online gambling markets, Marionneau and Järvinen-Tassopoulos (2017) discuss the recently de-regulated French system which demand certain consumer protection measures by gambling providers. Their study shows that the system allows for a great deal of interpretation which calls for more stringent regulation and enforcement of responsible gambling provision.

Fogharty (2017) argues that while responsible gambling codes of practice and guidelines exist in most regulated gambling environments around the world, the extent to which they acknowledge and engage with concepts of cultural and linguistic diversity is significantly lacking, and in many cases, completely absent. This can be crucial for any critical examination of the extent to which consumers are truly and fully ‘informed’. Reviewing the existence of cultural sensitivity in different responsible gambling communications in an Australian context, this piece discusses the homogeneous geographical and semantic aspects of the existing knowledge and techniques of gambling policy in terms of cultural competency in responsible gambling practice.

Writing on responsible gambling codes of conduct in EGM venues in Victoria, Australia, Rintoul et al. (2017) report on their research into the enforcement – or lack thereof – of such codes. The voluntary nature of these codes appears to have resulted in them being honored more in the breach than in the observation. These studies indicate that industry self-regulation may not necessarily be the best way of ensuring good standards in consumer protection.

Alexius (2017) inquires into understandings of the idea of responsible gambling by studying different stakeholders’ understandings of the phenomenon. She studies how representatives of the Swedish gambling industry, gambling problem prevention and support structures articulate responsibility for the problems that arise from gambling. Alexius is able to show how responsibility for the gambling-related harm is actively constructed and reproduced in a hegemonic way that situates the main responsibility for the emergence and handling of gambling-related harm on the individual gambler, and that this practice relies heavily on the individual’s capacity to control and adjust his/her consumption to prevent gambling-related harm.

Studies discussing responsible gambling and consumer protection provide different insights into what we are presented with when we speak of gambling policies. However, policy plays many parts in the regulation of gambling, and the interests of stakeholders are not always represented equally. Indeed, responsible gambling can be seen as a legitimating device for the maintenance and expansion of gambling. In his article discussing the legalization of gambling and cannabis in the United States, Nikkinen (2017) also highlights aspects of the legitimation of gambling and other dangerous consumptions. The flows of funds to good causes provide an argument for legalisation, but this may create more harm than benefit.

Impacting behavior

Gambling providers’ main interest, of course, does not center on trying to prevent people from gambling. Like all companies, they strive to maximize revenues, and as such they address and engage their clientele in different ways. Their main concern is to get consumers to gamble on their products. The dual role of providing games and trying to inform consumers on the safest and best ways of restricting their own gaming has been pointed out as a contradictory imperative. Initiatives from the industry to be responsible game providers must inevitably be carefully assessed when it comes to actual impacts on behavior.

Two review papers in this special issue inquire into the evidence of responsible gambling techniques concerning concrete gambling situations. A systematic review by Mazmanian (2017) concerns studies that examine different types of industry-implemented and environmental strategies to minimize or reduce harm from gambling. The review indicates that the most efficient strategies aimed at reducing gambling time and expenditure involve a repertoire of different techniques: the introduction of gamblers’ continuous self-appraisal techniques, for example, through pop-up messages; allowing only small maximum bets ($1); removal of ways of increasing sums by abolishing large note acceptors and nearby ATMs; decreasing operating hours of the gambling activity; and, last but not least, banning smoking.

Whelan (2017) conducted a systematic review of the literature of warning messages – a praxis that turned out to be largely supported in the literature. Messages were shown to inform consumers and, if applied appropriately, could potentially reduce harm. The mode of message display, along with placement, content, framing, and context were all found to influence the impact of messages. Whelan’s review also shows some characteristics of the messages modalities that tend to demonstrate optimal impact: popping-up on the center screen; interrupting play, and requiring active removal by the player. Whelan identifies a need to more systematically relate these praxis insights to the policy level, especially when prevention efforts are discussed.

Newall’s (2017) attention focusses on ways in which gamblers are made to perceive their odds of winning. Live-odds adverts from two months of televised English Premier League matches were analyzed and shown to be biased towards complex, rather than simple, gambles. Behavioral economical experiments were performed in order to quantify the rationality of participants’ forecasts of the games. The basic argument is that the psychological circumstance that more complex phenomena involve more expectations. As a result the soccer fans studied rarely formed rational probability judgments for the complex events dominating gambling advertising, but were much better at estimating simple events. Newall concludes that British gambling advertising is concentrated on the complex products that mislead consumers the most – evidence which is highly valuable.

In a spatial analysis by Wardle (2017) risks to gambling problems are mapped in two English regions – Manchester and Westminster in London – looking for potential risks and finessing the evidence that gambling venues tend to cluster in areas of greater deprivation. By modelling the risk to gambling problems of the local population, Wardle’s study is able to problematize a sometimes ‘taken for granted’ correlation between areas of risk and deprivation. She shows that some relatively affluent areas have a high number of services for vulnerable people, attracting risk populations to these locations. Overall the study suggests that, when mapping areas where people may be at greater risk of gambling problems, a sole focus on deprivation alone runs the risk of missing important local patterns.

Elton-Marshall (2017) reviews factors associated with adolescent online and land-based gambling in Canada. With the help of survey data the study shows that compared to adolescents who did not have a gambling problem, those who displayed low to moderate or high problem gambling severity were significantly more likely to gamble online. The study makes the case that the framing of studies must be widened in order to understand current gambling praxis and adherent policy instruments. It also suggests that prevention efforts should actively focus on gambling across modalities. This can easily be tied back to the conclusions by Marionneau and Järvinen-Tassopoulos (2017), discussed at the beginning of this editorial: in addition to the multi-stakeholder, spatial and systemic variations to be considered in any given gambling policy praxis, regulation must also clearly spell out the targeted types and logics of gaming.

The way forward

This special issue is intended to provide a renewed impetus into the development of a more consistent and global approach to gambling policy studies. To achieve this, it will be necessary to expand international co-operation, identify and utilize a larger number of publication channels, and develop a willingness to expand the field away from its traditional focus on psychological and epidemiological studies. However, this is underway. Interest in gambling policy has expanded rapidly, as this collection of studies evidences. We hope and anticipate that it will attract more scholarly interest, and more importantly, support improved gambling policy and regulation.

The guest editors would like to thank the journal, its editor in chief Derek Heim, and all the contributors for the opportunity for us to jointly edit this edition of Addiction Research and Theory.

Matilda Hellman Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland [email protected]

Jenny Cisneros Örnberg Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs (SoRAD), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Charles Livingstone Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.