Why do people gamble? This is a question worth pondering from all aspects. For the government understanding about this issue could help them create more policy guidelines; For merchants, it becomes an absolute necessity to know exactly why their consumers decide to invest in their products; For players, examining their attitude towards gambling can avoid developing a gambling problem.
In the article “Risk Perception Between Men and Women”, we have mentioned that players are likely to some emotion-induced actions during or after games, such as bragging, showing off, roaring, hitting tables, crying or sadness. During the research OMNI GAMING realized a pattern that perhaps emotions may be an important factor affecting player’s behavior during games, so after careful investigation were conducted we would like to show you our findings!
From Gaming Research Journal, one studies on the motivation of adult gambling and pointed out that the enhancement degree of game behavior has a positive relationship with emotions. Another research report from Sweden’s Gothenburg University also points to gambling influencing people’s mood, bringing psychological rewards, and generates positive feelings and driving out negative emotions.
More importantly, Binde, a researcher from the University of Gothenburg proposed a model that expresses the motivation of people engaging in gambling behavior, comes from one core motivation and four secondary motivations. The core motivation is “The Chance of Winning”, which is the main driven force for players to reach the ultimate response in gambling behavior; and the four secondary motivations are “Dream of Hitting the Jackpot”, “Social Rewards”, “Intellectual Challenge”, and “Mood Change”. These four different motivations also influence players choice of games greatly! Let’s find out what impacts these motivations bring to an individual!
Dreaming of Hitting the Jackpot
It’s everyone’s dream to become rich overnight, especially for people who struggle in life due to less income. This motivation often happens upon players who enjoys buying lottery tickets. By investing a low-cost lottery ticket in reward of a huge amount of wealth that can last a lifetime as the final reward is defiantly a charming investment for anyone. This is the best proof to why lottery has lasted for the last two thousand years and still growing strong with its business empire.
Once when players purchase lottery, it is inevitable they begin to imagine the possibility of winning the grand prize, and how to use the money after, as mentioned in detail at “Embracing FIFA World Cup: Manipulation Tips Intro.” By having the imagination to win, it creates a fantasy, however this kind of fantasy often creates joyful moment in players mindset. Particularly from lottery commercials, they often project these fantasies as a motivation that leads players to a dream that I could change your life when you win the lottery tickets.
In addition to deeper lottery associations, some casino games also find a similar way to motivate their players and affect their perception. Such as the jackpot function during a slot game, is the best example.
Social Rewards
There are three kinds of social rewards in gambling behavior, communicating, compete, and showing off. In a specific scenario environment, it also forms a social culture that may affect player’s behavioral motivation. Any of the above factors can happen in any type of gambling but happens more frequently in sports betting.
In the past, before web technology flourished, buying sports lottery tickets such as horse racing, players had to purchase at betting stations. While crowds gather, exchanging of opinions and information sharing will be unavoidable; when opinions differ, confrontation or competition within players grows stronger. No matter who wins, a brag show is inevitable to happen, proofing its victorious moment to everyone regarding their unicity.
While people gather at the same environment for a long time, the environment will gradually form to its own unique social culture. This creates a certain degree of belonging for players. For players who are within the social culture community, every activity happening within will seem like an ordinary lifestyle; as for outsiders, this social culture may cause curiosity and give them the motivation to participate in the same activities, so they may be part of the same social culture.
Due to the advancement of network technology in recent years, players no longer need to go out, they can easily bet at home in various types of games and sports events of all sizes around the world. However, the motivation for social reward still stands in online social forums. In other words, even if the need of face to face contact between players have decreased, they can still communicate and compete along with the satisfactory of gloating through forums. And we can easily see sports betting and lottery tickets being the most discussed topic at online forums.
Intellectual Challenge
As the name implies, the intellectual challenge is when players attempt to challenge the odds of the game through their own intelligence. When players think their intelligence or skills are enough to win a certain type of game, it will motivate them to join the game. This type of player usually plays games that involves self-recognition and disdainful towards RNG or lottery.
Players who are motivated by intellectual challenge are prone to appear in horse racing, sports betting and games on the table such as playing cards and Pai Gow. These players often strategize based on their own research or experience in gambling, which brings great satisfactory feelings to the players.
Mood Change
Previous article we have mentions that female players can temporarily escape emotional stress when they play RNG-type of games such as slot games, allowing negative emotions to find outlets. At the same time many games can change players current mood status. For example, when a player makes a bet decision in a more complex type of gambling, the temporary concentration is enough to make him forget all his or her troubles.
As the game results are about to be announced, once when the player finds that they are only one step away to the grand prize, they will feel a lot of stimulating experiences this is also known as near miss that we have mentioned before.
From here we discovered during the process of participating in a gambling behavior, it is considerably relaxing and releases stress. Therefore, under some preconditions, participating in gambling should also be a good leisure and entertainment.
Core Motivations: The Chance of Winning
The four motivations described above are the main drive for players to gamble, any kind of motivation that exist can quickly trigger players to participate in gambling. But the four motivations are not mutually exclusive, the can exist at the same time and vary from one individual to another. However, the chance of winning is the core motivation. Only if this exist can other motivations be the driving force for players to participate in variety of games.
Simply put, being able to “win” is the ultimate motivation for players to decide whether they should participate in the game. However, the reward for winning doesn’t necessarily have to be money but can also be a psychological or social satisfaction. As Author David Spanier once said:
Money is the fuel of gambling; it drives it, as petrol powers a car, but the pleasure of driving a car is not about petroleum. It’s about speed, style, movement. Fuel is merely what makes the car run. In that sense, the real motives behind gambling is to be sought elsewhere.
Despite asking most players about their motivation for gambling, the answer usual results with winning money. This is understandable, because winning money is defiantly the main driving force of gambling, however the satisfactory and joy may also weigh more value than money, however majority of the players do not know why they enjoy. For example, when a person inadvertently plays scratch card and wins a small number of bonus, he may be happy for the good fortune for the whole day, and even share his joy with friends and family everywhere. Little did he know what really made him happy wasn’t just the money but the feeling of “victory.”
Therefore, the core motivation of most players to conduct gambling behavior is to “win”, rather than just “winning money.”
Reference:
- Binde, P. (2013). Why people gamble: A model with five motivational dimensions. International Gambling Studies,13(1), 81–97. doi: 10.1080/14459795.2012.712150.
- Lambe, L., Mackinnon, S. P., & Stewart, S. H. (2015). Validation of the gambling motives questionnaire in emerging adults. Journal of Gambling Studies, 31, 867–885.
- Jakob Jonsson, Ingrid Munck, Rachel Volberg, Per Carlbring (2017), Psychometric Evaluation and the Role of Emotions in an Online Self-Test for Gambling Behavior,
Journal of Gambling Studies, June 2017, Volume 33, Issue 2, pp 505–523
