New Directions in Internet Gambling Research

Session Title

Session 2-3-F: Lightning Talks

Presenters

Timothy Edson, Harvard Medical SchoolFollow

Presentation Type

Lightning Talk

Location

Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada

Start Date

29-5-2019 1:45 PM

End Date

29-5-2019 3:10 PM

Disciplines

Behavioral Economics | Public Health | Substance Abuse and Addiction

Abstract

Abstract: Partnerships between industry and research have yielded enormous opportunities to advance gambling research. These types of opportunities are particularly salient for online gambling research: online gambling player data allows researchers to easily observe and analyze players’ gambling behavior over longer periods of time compared to traditional means of data collection. A new partnership between the Cambridge Health Alliance Division on Addiction and GVC Holdings (the parent company of several online gambling operators) has the potential to advance internet gambling research even further by allowing us to track the same users across a wider range of gambling products.

Implications: The ability to track internet gamblers across multiple types of gambling products will allow us to have a better understanding of users’ overall gambling behavior. This will make it easier to identify markers for problematic gambling earlier on and develop novel intervention systems for problem gamblers.

Keywords

gambling, Internet gambling, big data

Author Bios

Dr. Timothy Edson is a Research & Evaluation Scientist at the Division on Addiction, Cambridge Health Alliance, and a Research Associate in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He earned his PhD in Criminal Justice and Criminology from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2014. His research includes daily fantasy sports and evaluation of responsible gambling programs.

Funding Sources

This work was supported through a contract with GVC Services, Ltd. GVC did not have any involvement in the research itself.

Competing Interests

The Division on Addiction and affiliated faculty have received funding in the past three years from DraftKings, the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility (FAAR), The Healing Lodge of the Seven Nations via NIH and Indian Health Services (IHS), NIH, the Integrated Centre on Addiction Prevention and Treatment of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, which receives funding from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, National Center for Responsible Gaming, the New Mexico Responsible Gaming Association, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, MGM (through a subcontract with UNLV), and GVC Services, Ltd.