Pop-up messages have the potential to reduce gambling behaviour. This experimental study examined the effectiveness of fear-based messages. Participants were 59 adults who had gambled online in the past six months. They viewed a video of an online roulette play. During the course of the video, participants saw two pop-up messages about either the social or financial consequences of gambling. One message was high threat and the other was low threat. Overall, message content about the social or financial consequences did not make a difference. But, the threat level did for the messages about the social consequences. In this condition, the high-threat message was more effective than the low-threat message. Eye-tracking revealed that participants attended to each message for a similar amount of time, regardless of the content or threat level.
