Senet Group, the UK responsible gambling body, has today
published a qualitative independent research report which
examines gambling behaviours in the context of personal
control.
The research sets out the elements required for a behaviour
change approach to tackling problem gambling, where an
understanding of why and how people behave as they do can help to
identify opportunities to influence and change behaviour for the
better.
Conducted by independent agency Revealing Reality, the
research reveals that regardless of their risk profile, all
gamblers want to stay in control and that this control is
critical to their enjoyment of gambling. As a result,
people set boundaries to their gambling which they look to
maintain through a variety of formal and informal management
strategies. The challenge for gambling operators is to help
and support gamblers in setting and adhering to these boundaries,
by both reinforcing their motivation to stay in control but also
by providing the tools to make it easier.
Commenting on the research, Gillian Wilmot, Chairman of the
Senet Group, said:
“This research report provides some practical insights into
how people manage their gambling on a day to day basis, and how
the gambling industry might support their enjoyment of gambling
by helping them stay in control.
“The gambling industry can do a great deal more to develop
and promote tools and techniques which assist gamblers in
understanding the positive benefits of control, but more
importantly how they can keep track of their gambling, whether
that’s through the amount they are spending or the time they
devote to playing. In this we can look to other sectors,
such as health and wellness, for recent examples where consumer
access to more and more information about their own patterns of
behaviour, is helping people make better choices.
“This research will now inform the next generation of
Senet’s player messaging campaign, When the Fun Stops,
Stop, which sought to put an understanding of customers at
the heart of efforts to raise standards. This
campaign has now reached an estimated 82% of regular gamblers
since its launch, and was itself born out of research which
revealed a link between negative emotional states and the
impairment of control when gambling.”
Also commenting on the research, Damon De Ionno, Managing
Director of Revealing Reality, said:
“For a long time, gambling industry operators have been
asking what they can do to help people gamble more safely and
responsibly.
“Our research has deliberately focused on people’s
behaviours in real-life gambling situations. What we have
found is that people struggle to gamble safely unless they are in
control while they are gambling.
“This research provides a clear summary and examples of
many ways that operators can actively help their customers stay
in control of their gambling – and make sure they don’t undermine
their attempts to do so.”
The ‘In Control’ research report was produced by
Revealing Reality, an independent agency specialising in research
that specifically identifies ways to help people change behaviour
for the better. It employed a combination of ethnographic
interviews and shadowed observation of 25 participants, selected
by PGSI scores to be representative of the low, medium and
high-risk gambling categories. The sample was also
recruited to reflect a variety of demographic backgrounds,
including a spread of age, gender, ethnicity and employment
status. Participants lived across England, Scotland and
Wales, and more detail about them is available in the
report.
