Gambling can lead to harms for people who gamble and their family and friends. In response, the United Kingdom (UK) and the Netherlands have introduced financial risk assessments, designed to identify when a person's gambling spending passes a set threshold. This study evaluated the UK's proposed £150 net-deposit threshold using survey data that were linked to banking records from 424 adults who gambled online.
The researchers found that the proposed net-deposit threshold captured 66–75% of people at-risk of harms; however, nearly 50% of people at no/low risk also surpassed this threshold. This indicated that the £150 threshold placed more emphasis on harm prevention than liberty preservation. Raising the threshold to £186.90 could improve this balance. But the threshold should be lowered for young adults. Using cross-operator spending could more accurately distinguish at-risk versus no/low-risk gambling.
