Mobile gambling involves playing games of chance for money using a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet computer. It is a growing segment of the gambling industry and it is possible to place real money bets on sports events, casino games, bingo and more. Many online casinos have launched their own branded mobile apps and these offer the same high levels of security as their desktop sites. The best mobile gambling apps feature state-of-the-art encryption to protect users from hackers and financial risk.
A future without mobile phones is unimaginable, and these are one of the primary drivers of the gambling industry’s unprecedented growth. But while mobile gaming offers a number of benefits, it has also been linked to increased rates of gambling addiction and destructive personal financial decisions.
This paper investigates the role of mobile gambling apps in these negative outcomes, with the aim of identifying features that might distinguish this form of play from other forms of digital gaming and provide a foundation for future research on the relationship between technology and addictive behaviour. It combines behavioural and cognitive approaches, investigating how app usage may influence gambling and other associative learning processes.
Across a series of studies, participants were asked to download and use a custom-designed gambling app on their phone, with the intention of observing their behaviour in naturalistic settings. Participants first completed questionnaires (including the Gambling Questions, PGSI, GRCS, Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, and Beck Depression Inventory) as well as a computerised contingency judgement task that probed the illusion of control in gambling. GPS co-ordinates and gambling data were recorded from the phone, but participants were required to explicitly opt-in to the recording of these data.
The results of the study suggest that engagement with a gambling app can be characterised by periods of extinction punctuated by reinforcement. It is therefore important to consider the role of reinforcement schedules and latency in gambling behaviour when considering the design of mobile apps. This is particularly pertinent for the context of mobile gambling, where latencies between gambles are both an intrinsic part of smartphone use and a deliberate design element that can be fine-tuned to elicit desired behaviours. In addition, the findings indicate that mobile games that show convergence with gambling activities could be exploited to promote addictive behaviours by leveraging reinforcement and latency. This has implications for mobile app design and regulation, and highlights the need to develop new models of mobile gaming in order to better understand its potential for harm.