Sunday, July 20, 2008

Online gamblers on the couch in psychological study

Media sympathetic to the online gaming cause have rallied around findings in a recent study out of the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business by June Cotte and Kathryn A. Latour entitled Blackjack in the Kitchen: Understanding Online versus Casino Gambling.

In line with the principles of spin, the industry’s editors (and the University of Ontario PR department; no dummies they) have chosen to accentuate the study’s ultimate call “for legalization of online gambling to allow for better regulation and to potentially reduce harmful effects.”

Fair enough, supposes LCD; after all, the appeal for American and Canadian regulation is mentioned four times on pages 41-43 of the 59-page document. Unfortunately, those “reporting” on the study who perhaps haven’t actually read the work, an interesting psychological study of some 30 gamblers of either online or brick-and-mortar casino persuasion, are telling fans little more than this anti-UIGEA stance.

LiveCasinoDirect.com to the rescue! Below run some excerpts from the study; you can link to the piece here, and “Blackjack in the Kitchen” will be published in full in the winter 2009 edition of the Journal of Consumer Research.

The study used a variety of techniques employing interviews, visual imagery and collages to analyze the 30 subjects’ metaphorical thinking on the subject of gambling. In approaching analysis in this fashion, “interviewers delve into the metaphors that participants use to represent the meanings of gambling, both explicitly to others, or implicitly to themselves.” The results, hope study authors, go beyond cognitive thinking of the individuals to present a deeper picture of gamblers’ psychological landscape.

•  “About $10 billion a year is spent by consumers worldwide on online gambling. Despite its illegality in many countries, that number continues to grow. Herein we present a qualitative, collage-based study of thirty Las Vegas online and casino gamblers. ... In our research we examine online gambling, contrasted with casino gambling. The theoretical significance of our research is our focus on differential meanings for the focal construct gambling. ... We argue herein that although some experiential consumption can be done at home, it becomes a different consumption experience when it is done at home.”

•  “Two major contextual differences are perceptions of social connectedness and perceptions of anonymity. ... For casino gamblers, gambling provides a perceived social connection with unknown others, the public, in a sense of shared fates and temporary community. Online gamblers, on the contrary, perceive a lack of social connections in the online realm. ... these perceptual differences are seen by each group as positive aspects of their chosen gambling form.”
 
•  “Casino gamblers perceive online gambling as bereft of social connections, which was pivotal to the enjoyment of gambling for them. The online gamblers also perceive this lack of social connectedness in virtual gambling. But for them, this aspect is positive; it is one crucial reason the online gamblers gave for their choice to stay home and gamble. Many online gamblers chose the online environment because of the perception of the lack of social connections.”

•  “One benefit of this perception of anonymity is that online players often think about the nameless others online in ways that fit the player’s own desires.”

•  “The perceived anonymity of the online environment equalizes gamblers, so that low rollers and high rollers are treated equally. In contrast, in a casino more experienced gamblers who bet larger amounts are treated specially, and some gamblers go to the casino seeking such ego gratification.”

•  “While the convenience of integrating gambling into home life was remarked on by all our participants, some of the potential downfalls of this integration were not. ... Integration appears to have additional risks, not always recognized by our participants. [One participant] admitted he now plays online every night after dinner while his wife is watching TV in the other room ... He mainly gambles online out of boredom ‘to pass the time.’”

•  “Casinos are often portrayed in popular culture images as dens of sin and locations for transgressions against proper, moral behavior (e.g., “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”). Indeed, that has been a main appeal of casinos; transgression has appeal, whether it is based on sex, gambling, or other vices ... However, with the growth in casino gambling[,] far more Americans have fairly ready access to a physical casino. Casino gambling is largely corporate-run, and is heavily regulated and scrutinized. As a result, the experience of casino gambling is often more sanitized than the experience of illegal, unregulated online gambling. The latter has more of the whiff of scandal and transgression attached to it, so it may be more desirable to those gamblers who can easily choose between the casino and online experiences.”

•  “The in-home integration of online gambling certainly allows it to easily become a consumer compulsion, where day-to-day activities are driven by their gambling play. Indeed, several online players structured their daily activities around various tournaments (while we acknowledge visiting casinos can also become ritualized, the in-home experience of online gambling makes the ritual easier to adopt).”

•  “Clearly, online at-home consumption has far-reaching implications. By examining how gambling changes as it moves into the online sphere, we have taken a first step towards examining this issue.”

All in all, a good way to “pass the time.” Heh, heh...