Behavioral Economics Commons^™

The Unpredictable Positive Effects Of Sports Gambling: Gamblers Think Losing Feels Worse Than It Actually Feels, Guy Voichek, Nathan Novemsky

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Implications statement

Gamblers underestimate how much fun small wagers add to enjoying sports events. They think losing will feel worse than it really does. Simple reminder can correct this misprediction.

Abstract

When considering whether to gamble on a sporting event, people may ask themselves how winning or losing will affect their experience. In a series of four experiments, we find that people under-appreciate the positive effect of gambling on watching sporting events, in a way that causes them to under-value the opportunity to place a small stakes gamble. While participants predict that a gamble will enhance or diminish an experience …

Does Near Win Affect People's Investment Behavior?, Jia Yuan

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Near win is a special kind of failure that comes closely to actual success. It shows up frequently in people’s investment behavior. Only a few studies have researched on the relation between near win and its impact on the future investment. And in the literature, there are conflicting results on this issue. In this paper, we examine the effect of near win on people’s investment amount by exploiting a unique panel individual level lottery purchase data with over 100,000 players which trace each of their purchases for several months. We find that people who have experienced a near win would …

Gambling Behavior In Controlled Laboratory Experiments, Don Ross, J. Todd Swarthout

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

We designed a slot machine interface to study gambling behavior over real monetary amounts in a controlled laboratory environment. The interface allowed us to study the effect of multiple playlines compared to single playlines, the use of abstract tokens instead of allowing the gambler to see expenditures and payoffs in a natural currency, the effect of “near miss” displays on subjective beliefs about the chances of winning, and the effect of “wins disguised as losses” on gambling behavior. We measured the risk preferences of each subject, allowing for probability weighting and loss aversion, as well as the evolution of subjective …