Research on Behaviors of Online Gamblers Published

A recent article in the European Journal of Public Health reports more results from the collaboration between the Division on Addictions at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate and Bwin, an online gambling company. The collaboration has allowed researchers to analyze data about the gambling behaviors of its customers. The report by LaBrie, et al., Inside the Virtual Casino: A prospective longitudinal study of actual Internet casino gambling, focuses on more than 4,000 players of online casino games. The study shows that the gamblers playing casino games, none of whom were from the United States, played less frequently than Internet poker players do, but also gamble for longer sessions and had higher average losses.

There are some findings that could be relevant to responsible gambling policies. The study found that as losses increased, the amount wagered and the time spent wagering decreased. As the report noted, "bad luck was a disincentive for gambling." This rational response to losses reflects that, as a group, the players were able to control their gambling.

The study also determined that the top 5 percent of players, termed “heavily involved gamblers” in the study, played both more often and for considerably longer periods of time than did the other 95 percent. This subset of gamblers also bet at much higher levels, with their average bet almost 10 times the size of the average bet of the other players. Yet, in the same comparison, the heavily involved gamblers lost a significantly smaller amount of their total wagers.