GPRU Overview 

 

The Gambling Policy and Research Unit (GPRU) is a specialist team within BIT, dedicated to understanding and reducing gambling harms in Great Britain by drawing on the full range of BIT’s expertise and resources. The GPRU is a four year programme, funded through regulatory settlement funds via the Gambling Commission. We look at a range of different areas of gambling policy, including the impact of marketing, access to support and treatment, the design of operator websites, and role of financial service organisations. Please click here to explore our work further or email gambling@bi.team to find out more. 

 

Some of our recent work result highlights includes:

 

How do activity statements impact gambling behaviour? (have attached pdf of the report)

 

We ran an online lab experiment investigating the impact of activity statements on gambling behaviour. The statements provide feedback to consumers on their gambling activity, summarising key statistics, such as amount spent, won, or lost over a given period. We tested four different designs of activity statements against a control group who saw no activity statement. The designs incorporated different behavioural science concepts, to help increase engagement with the statements. 

 

We found that seeing any activity statement resulted in participants showing improved recall of the amount they had betduring their gambling sessions. Providing this feedback in a clear, transparent way helped participants to engage more with the information. We also found that both average stake sizes and the amount bet were lower in participants who saw an activity statement. Encouragingly, we found that 9 in 10 participants wanted activity statements to be implemented by operators. 

 

We are hoping to trial the statements in the ‘real world’ with an operator, to further refine the designs and test the impact on actual gambling behaviour. 

 

How do slot game advert features impact gambling behaviour?  (have attached pdf of the report)

 

Our study on gambling ads was the first of its kind to test the impact of different slot game advert features (we tested statements like  “no wagering”, “more than 73,000 ways to win” and “make your downtime epic”). We found that, on average, varying these features did not change people’s understanding of the advertised game, or their gambling behaviour. There were a couple of exceptions, however:

1. Those who saw the ‘no wagering’ advert had marginally lower understanding of the free spin’s T&Cs.

2. Among those at high risk of gambling harm (as measured by an adapted version of the Problem Gambling Severity Index), the advert features significantly changed the total amount staked. 

Based on these findings, we have suggested revisions The Committee of Advertising Practice may wish to consider making to their responsibility and problem gambling guidance. We suggested expanding the features that shouldn’t be used to imply erroneous perceptions of risk and control, to include ‘no wagering’ appeals and ‘number of ways you can win’.