The purpose of this study was to examine differences in gambling behaviour among those who voluntarily identified when gambling on land-based electronic gambling machines (EGMs) before it was mandatory to do so in Finland, and those who only identified after it was mandatory. The researchers used data from a random sample of 28,351 active customers of Veikkaus with at least one identified land-based machine gambling session between December 12, 2017, and May 31, 2022. The researchers identified different groups of people based on their gambling behaviour during the different implementation phases of mandatory identification.
People who identified for the first time only after identification became mandatory for land-based EGMs had the highest average losses. Across all groups, mandatory loss limits were linked to a decrease in overall gambling. Monthly losses rose after mandatory identification was extended to EGMs in arcades for all groups. This finding suggests that many people chose to not identify, at least during some gambling sessions, while the option to do so was still available.
