The influence of unclaimed prize information on people who play scratch cards

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Author(s): Walker, Alexander, C. ; Stange, Madison ; Fugelsang, Jonathan A. ; Koehler, Derek J. ; Dixon, Mike J.

Journal: Journal of Gambling Studies

Year Published: 2018

Date Added: December 19, 2019

At times, people base their decisions on uninformative information. This often occurs in gambling, where people base their play on information that seems relevant and important but is useless in reality. This study examined the way people are influenced by information on unclaimed prizes when they play scratch cards. Results showed that information on unclaimed prizes influenced people’s thoughts about how they felt and acted. Specifically, higher unclaimed prizes made people think they were more likely to win, feel more excited to play, and prefer to purchase the scratch cards featuring higher number of unclaimed prizes. This bias continued even after they received information that enabled them to calculate the percentages of payback.

Citation: Walker, A. C., Stange, M., Fugelsang, J. A., Koehler, D. J., & Dixon, M. J. (2018). Unclaimed prize information biases perceptions of winning in scratch card gambling. Journal of Gambling Studies, 34(4), 1355-1375. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-018-9770-2

Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-018-9770-2

Keywords: cognitive biases ; decision making ; gambling ; prize information ; scratch cards

Topics: Gambling and the Brain

Conceptual Framework Factors: Exposure - Marketing and Messaging ; Psychological - Judgement and Decision Making ; Gambling Exposure

Study Design: Experimental: NRCT (non-randomized controlled trial)

Geographic Coverage: United States of America

Study Population: Experiment 1 included 201 participants (37.3% female, average age = 33), experiment 2 included 201 (44.8% female, average age = 34), and experiment 3 included 200 (33.8% female, average age = 33). All participants self-identified as U.S. residents.

Sampling Procedure: The researchers used convenience sampling to recruit participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk who are U.S. citizens

Study Funding:

This research was funded by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Open Access Fund from GREO.