Feature Story

July 15, 2008

Study: Legalization and Regulations for Online Gambling Needed; Research Shows Online Gambling Can Be More Dangerous Than Casino Gambling

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Believing online gambling has the potential to become more habitual than casino gambling, a marketing professor with the Richard Ivey School of Business is calling for legalization of online gambling to allow for better regulation and to potentially reduce harmful effects.

"One potential solution is to allow legitimate corporate sponsors, like the corporations that run the major casinos in Las Vegas or the government sponsors in Canada, to enter into a newly regulated market for online gambling," said June Cotte, Associate Professor of Marketing and George and Mary Turnbull Fellow, Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario.

"Just as legalized commercial gambling in casinos allows governments to regulate it, so, too, could the legalization of online gambling allow for better regulation and attempts to reduce the growth of problem gamblers."

For the study, "Blackjack in the Kitchen: Understanding Online Versus Casino Gambling," to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research in the winter of 2009, Cotte and colleague Kathryn A. Latour (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) interviewed 20 regular casino gamblers and 10 regular online gamblers using pictures as stimuli to learn what gambling feels like and how it is perceived.

Cotte and Latour suggest legalizing and regulating online gambling, similar to the way casino gambling is regulated, may help reduce the incidences of problem gambling.

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