Lottery marketing in Québec and social deprivation: excessive exposure, insufficient protection?

Abstract

In 2008, the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) undertook a research programme on lotteries. The preliminary qualitative exploratory component enabled us to observe the diversity and ubiquity of lottery advertising to which the vast majority of the population is exposed, including minors and non-players. The aim of a second component was to better comprehend the relationships between exposure to lottery marketing, lottery purchasing habits, attitudes towards gambling, and socio-economic vulnerability indicators. The study's data was collected by a polling firm from a representative sample of adults in the Québec population (n = 2001). Our survey revealed significant links between exposure, gambling behaviour and certain socio-economic indicators: for example, individuals with lower levels of education more often play the lotteries and spend the most on them. In addition, a greater number of people who are less educated and from a low-income household considered that lottery advertising was very or excessively present in their daily lives and that the amount of advertising has increased in recent years. From the perspective of creating healthy environments and protecting vulnerable populations, legislative measures to control the quantity, location and contents of gambling marketing would be promising preventive measures.

Keywords::

• gambling
• lottery promotion
• marketing
• exposure
• socio-economic vulnerability

Declaration of interests

Funding sources: This research was funded by the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux du Québec (MSSS) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQ-SC) through the Programme des actions concertées sur les impacts socioéconomiques des jeux de hasard et d'argent.

Conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elisabeth Papineau

Elisabeth Papineau is an anthropologist and researcher in gambling studies at the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ). She is in charge of the scientific animation of a community of practice devoted to the sharing of knowledge about gambling in a public health perspective. She has carried out different researches on VLT gambling, on the social representation of gambling among ethnic groups, on senior's gambling. Her current research interests include the individual and collective impacts of online gambling, the gambling offer and its relation to ethics and public health.

Fanny Lemétayer

Fanny Lemetayer is research fellow at the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ). She has participated in various research projects focused on gambling marketing strategies' impact on gambling behaviour and health. She is particularly interested in issues related to the dual mandate of prevention and promotion of gambling held by the State Corporation.

Amadou Diogo Barry

Jean-François Biron is a researcher for Montreal's public health office in Québec, where he is responsible for the gambling prevention and addiction regional committee. He is an active member of the Collectif sur le jeu et ses impacts and has published and co-authored many works related to problem gambling. He is currently leading an interdisciplinary task group aiming at developing population-wise indicators of harmful gambling. As a scientific expert, he represented Québec's public health officers in a government consultation regarding the effect of alcohol provision in Quebec's casinos.

Jean-François Biron

Amadou Barry is a statistician at Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ). He holds a masters in pure mathematics (number theory) from the University of Bordeaux, Leiden and Padova. He also holds a masters in applied mathematics in social sciences from the University of Provence and Aix-Marseille II, France.