Examining the gambling behaviors of Chinese online lottery gamblers: are they rational?

Consumer Profile Segmentation in Online Lottery Gambling Utilizing Behavioral Tracking Data from the Portuguese National Lottery

The present study is the first to examine account-based tracking data of Portuguese online lottery players comprising the gambling activity of all active players over a one-year period (N = 154,585). The main research goal was the identification of groups or segments of players by their engagement levels (high, neutral, low) and to assess preferences in product category with the use of CHAID (Chi-Square Automatic Interaction Detection) segmentation models, based on expenditure and sociodemographic variables. Findings showed that (1) age was found to be the most influential differentiating variable in player segmentation and had a positive correlation with expenditures and wagers, (2) gender was the second most influential variable (males represented 78.7% of players), (3) education the third most influential variable and had a negative correlation with expenditure, and (4) region was the least relevant variable. The models generated several players segments that engaged in different games. Older males (54–64 years; ≥ 65 years) were the most engaged overall. Younger males (18–34 years) were the least engaged but showed preferences for lotto as did females (35–49 years). Lower educated males and older males (49 years+) with a high school education were the most engaged in instant lottery games. These findings show that Portuguese lottery players can be grouped into several segments with distinct demographic characteristics and corresponding engagement levels. These findings help support more effective marketing segmentation and will help in the targeting of responsible gambling approaches.

Impaired Decision Making is Associated with Poor Inhibition Control in Nonpathological Lottery Gamblers

Previous studies by questionnaires have demonstrated that lottery gamblers who have not meet the criteria of pathological gambler show greater gambling acceptability. However, few empirical evidence of whether such nonpathological lottery gamblers (NPLGs) display the same impairments of decision making with pathological gamblers has been found so far. In present study, NPLGs and matched controls (MCs) were asked to perform the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and inter-temporal choice task (ICT). We found that compared to MCs, NPLGs displayed much lower IGT scores, net gains and proportions of advantageous decks in the IGT task and much higher percentages of trials during which smaller-but-sooner rewards were chosen in the ICT. These findings indicate that NPLGs display much more risky and impulsive decision makings, just like pathological gamblers in the previous studies. Next, the Go/NoGo task was employed to explore the role of response inhibition in the impairment of decision making in NPLGs. We found that NPLGs did show much higher commission errors compared to MCs. Moreover, IGT scores, net gain and proportions of advantageous decks were significantly negatively correlated with commission errors, which indicates that poor response inhibition might be involved in the impairments of decision making in NPLGs. To our knowledge, we provided the first empirical evidence of impairment of decision making and its cognitive mechanisms in NPLGs.