Safer Gambling App – EROGamb 2.0
This project will gather information related to gambling norms, and individuals’ gambling patterns. It will use that information to see whether it can empower people who gamble with a contextual and accurate understanding of their gambling, whilst increasing their control over their gambling patterns.
The Research
The project, building on a previous project developing an app infrastructure, will develop and evaluate data-driven goal settings and feedback approaches for staying in control of gambling. The project will establish what the broad gambling community’s perceptions are in terms of normative gambling behaviour; and establish what normatively acceptable behaviour is for this community. Through increasing participants’ understanding of these norms, and their understanding of their own gambling, the project will challenge participants’ beliefs regarding their gambling. In this context, it will allow participants to set objectives and goals to modify their behaviour to make their gambling more informed and controlled.
Further to using understandings of norms to empower and control gambling, the project will also attempt to combat the cognitive bias that can be shown in some people who gamble. This refers to the misassumptions that people may have about chance, odds, luck, and broader patterns of gambling; that is, systematic mistakes in their thinking that impacts decision making and behaviour. These misassumptions will be challenged through developing and evaluating an information transparency layer in both promotional gambling materials, and in games themselves.
Methods
The project will make use of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, triangulating results of surveys, qualitative interviews, and literature reviews.