Consumers are more inclined to bet online if the activity is referred to as “gaming” rather than “gambling”, a forthcoming study has found.
US academics Ashlee Humphreys from the Northwestern University and Kathryn A LaTour from Cornell University conducted several experiments in the wake of US newspaper coverage of the April 2011 Black Friday indictments, which they argued had shifted perceptions of the legitimacy of online casinos, particularly among non-participants, by framing the activity as a crime.
To prove this, participants were presented with a series of “rags-to-riches” and “get-quick-rich” narratives on the subject which produced a range of positive and negative associations among the readers.
Humpreys and LaTour then found that simply by changing the word “gambling” to “gaming” in these narratives, non-bettors judged the industry and activity as more legitimate and could even be prompted “to be more inclined to participate in online betting”, the authors claim.
According to Humphreys and LaTour, the shift in perceptions is caused by the very different associations - often unconscious – evoked by the two labels, gaming prompting more positive implicit associations such as fun and entertainment, while gambling can prompt “seedier implicit associations like crime”, according to the authors.
The academics concluded that labelling has implications beyond whether or not people find an industry palatable, not least on the potential for social media to support - or hinder - the expansion of online gambling, depending on the labels diffused via these social media channels.
The study is due to be published in full in the Journal of Consumer Research in December.
Article written by Stephen Carter
