1.
Giuseppe A. Veltri, PhD
Study on
measures for the protection of consumers of
gambling services
PAF Responsible Gaming Summit
29TH SEPTEMBER 2015

2.
Background

3.
Background on work for the Commission
• 2011 Call for a framework contract on behavioural studies
• LSE and Partners Consortium among the five selected
contractors
• So far:
– Study on tobacco labelling and packaging (two studies)
– Study on Car labelling (C02 labels)
– Study on online gambling and consumer protective measures
– Study on online marketing and in app purchase for kids online
– Study on environmental footprint labels

4.
System 1 (fast) System 2 (slow)
Quick, automatic, no
effort, no sense of
voluntary control
Continuous construal of
what is going on at any
instant
Slow, effortful, attention
to mental activities
requiring it
Good at cost/benefit
analysis, but lazy and
saddled by decision
paralysis (cognitive
overload)
Characteristics
• Quick (Reflexive)
• Heuristic based
• Use shortcuts
Characteristics
• Deliberate (Reflective)
• Conscious
• Rule-based
When it plays
• When speed is critical
• Avoid decision paralysis
• When System 2 is lazy
or not activated (not
worth, no energy, lack
of awareness)
When it plays
• May take over when
System 1 cannot
process data
• May correct/override
System 1 if effort shows
that intuition or
impulse is wrong
By David Plunkert in NYT 27/11/2011
Thinking fast and slow

5.
Objectives and experiments
Measure the
relative
effectiveness of
existing and
possible new
consumer
protective measures
Laboratory
experiment
(UK, N=522)
Test subjects behavioural
and self-reported
responses to pre-gamble
and in-gamble treatments
Online
experiment
(7 countries,
N=5997)
Test subjects behavioural
and self-reported
responses to, and their
choices with respect to,
pre-gamble treatments

6.
Design

7.
LAB

8.
ONLINE
Demographics
and gambling
experience
pre-treatment
questionnaire
RANDOM
1 out of 8 Treatments
Post-treatment
Questions 1
Gamble (≈ 20-30 spins)
Online panel
(N=5997)
Filler task
Post-treatment
Questions 2
Post-treatment questionnaire
Opt-out
choice

9.
Samples
• Laboratory experiment conducted at LSE Lab:
– Convenience sample (N= 522) extracted from LSE Behavioural Lab Panel
– The LSE Behavioural Lab Panel comprises some 3000 contacts, who have expressed
an interest in participating in paid research. The pool of subjects consists primarily of
LSE students and staff, but also of individuals from surrounding universities
• Online Experiment:
– Simple random sample (N=5997), with sampling error +/- 1.25% for overall data and
+3.53% for country-specific data

10.
Multi-dimensional response variables
Scales measuring:
• Emotional:
• Valence: type
• Arousal: intensity
• Fear / Anxiety
Scales measuring:
• Recall of info
• Cognitive depth
of processing
Behavioural measures
• Time per bet
• Amount per bet
• Opt-in or opt-out
• Continue betting
when experiment
could be finished
Scale measuring:
• Future intentions

11.
Key ‘nudges’ we tested
Nudges Rationale Possibly de-biasing
Pictorial warning
Elicitation of emotions;
activate reflective thinking
Gambler’s fallacy, near-miss
fallacy
Overconfidence task
Instil doubts, activate
reflective thinking
Overconfidence, illusion of
control
Push pop up “You
lose”
Stop hot cognition; activate
reflective thinking
Gambler’s fallacy, near-miss
fallacy, hot and cold hand
streaks
Fixed monetary limit
Power of defaults; inertia
effect on betting decisions
Entrapment
Self-defined
Monetary limits
Mental Accounting; House
money effect
Entrapment
If they work we expected less and slower betting and higher self-reported
responses for treated subjects compared to the control group

12.
Laboratory experiment findings

13.
Notation

14.
Pre-gamble: behavioural measures

15.
Pre-gamble: self-reported measures (PANAS)

16.
Pre-gamble: self-reported measures (SAM)

17.
In-gamble: behavioural measures

18.
In-gamble: self-reported measures (PANAS)

19.
Online experiment findings

20.
Pre-gamble: behavioural measures

21.
Conclusions
① Pre-gamble treatments can be deemed to be systematically not effective
– At least three of the pre-gamble treatments were expected to be more effective than
what our findings shows (the two warnings and the overconfidence bias)
② For the other pre-gamble treatments ineffectiveness could be expected
from a behavioural perspective (logos, terms & conditions, registration
forms)
③ The registration form may have unintended effects and amount to over-
regulation
④ In-gamble measures altering the flow between gamblers and machine are
fairly effective in systematic ways

22.
g.a.veltri@le.ac.uk
@gaveltri