Stephanie Scott, Paul Hughes, Deputy Director of CSM Ian Hodgkinson, and Sascha Kraus sought to look at the drivers and inhibitors of online gambling across UK and US markets.

For online gambling operators, UK and US consumers’ online gambling behaviour is directly affected by wider social messages from the media and peer reviews. The more supportive the media and peer reviews the more likely consumers will engage with online gambling. Building a sense of anonymity into online gambling platforms increases the use of online gambling sites in the UK and US.

For policy makers, the findings may be used to better identify and address problem gamblers. The research findings reveal that the regulatory environment does little to inhibit online gambling in both countries; though such steps do appear to reduce consumer engagement with more traditional gambling facilities, such as casinos. Counterintuitively, in both the UK and US, online gambling engagement is not influenced by the opinions, views, or beliefs of family members or significant others (e.g. partners, spouses, etc.)

You can read more about this research here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162519312600

To cite: Scott, S., Hughes, P., Hodgkinson, I. and Kraus, S. (2019). Technology adoption factors in the digitization of popular culture: Analyzing the online gambling market. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 148, p.119717.