The study into harmful gambling behaviour was conducted by Mindway AI, Ecogra and CasinoReviews.net.
By Beth Turner
Mindway AI, Ecogra and CasinoReviews.net have concluded the Bet on Awareness campaign, which investigated player gaming habits and risk evaluation.
We spoke to representatives of the companies involved in the campaign in the May edition of Trafficology. In this, Mindway AI CEO Rasmus Kjaergaard explained the method through which data would be collected, using a card game made with the company’s Gamalyze tool.
Kjaergaard explained: “Gamalyze is designed to encourage players to understand their risk profile and their decision making while they are gambling… Essentially it is a gamified reinvention of the self-test, making self-testing more user-friendly, engaging and actionable than typical player questionnaires.
Of the total 236 initiated games, 181 were analysed by Gamalyze, using neuroimaging and analyses. Several factors were analysed, including sensitivity to loss and reward, persistence and sensitivity to win frequency. Each analysed game was then given a numbered ‘risk score,’ while players were also invited to guess their own risk score, with the two numbers compared to access players’ perception of their own risk-taking.
As the report explains: ‘If a person self-assessed a risk lower than their actual score, this result is negative (-). If the participant guessed a higher risk than the actual score, this result is positive (+). The smaller the deviation, the closer the perceived risk is to the actual demonstrated risk.’
Results
Overall, the Bet on Awareness campaign found that of the 181 analysed games, 94 fell into a higher risk category (50%+) while the remaining 87 fell into the lower risk categories. The results were most concentrated in the 40-50% range with 29 games, followed by 26 in the 20-30% category and 25 in the 60-70% category.
Roughly 16.5% of participants underestimated their gambling risk-taking, while 39% overestimated the risk. The majority of games fell into the assessment range of –10 to +30, with 110 of the 181 games falling into this area. This suggests the average player perceives their gambling risk-taking as close to or above their actual risk-taking.
In terms of sensitivity to loss, the results found that the majority (47) of games reported a 0-10% sensitivity to loss, indicating that winning was far more motivational to players than losing. Sensitivity to wins saw a fairly even spread across the 0-100% sensitivity brackets, indicating that regardless of player, rewards are what motivate continued play.
This is somewhat countered by findings that 91 games fell into low to moderate persistence categories (0-30%), indicating that the majority of players will not be overly persistent in pursuing wins after a certain point.
On the results, CasinoReviews.net Product Owner Nikoleta Kuncheva said: “This campaign has highlighted critical areas where intervention is needed. By working together, we can ensure that gamblers have the resources they need to make informed decisions and maintain healthy gambling habits.”