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Journal of Gambling Studies
Published in: Journal of Gambling Studies 4/2015

Open Access 01-12-2015 | Original Paper

Do Social Casino Gamers Migrate to Online Gambling? An Assessment of Migration Rate and Potential Predictors

Authors: Hyoun S. Kim, Michael J. A. Wohl, Melissa M. Salmon, Rina Gupta, Jeffrey Derevensky

Published in: Journal of Gambling Studies | Issue 4/2015

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Abstract

Social casino games (i.e., free-to-play online gambling games) are enjoyed by millions of players worldwide on a daily basis. Despite being free to play, social casino games share many similarities to traditional casino games. As such, concerns have been raised as to whether social casino games influences the migration to online gambling among people who have not engaged in such activity (see Griffiths in World Online Gambl 9:12–13, 2010). To date, however, no empirical research has assessed this possibility. Thus, the purpose of the present research was to assess the extent to which social casino gamers migrate to online gambling and potential predictors (time spent on social casino games, skill building, enhancement and micro-transactions) of such migration. To this end, social casino gamers who never gambled online (N = 409) completed a questionnaire battery assessing our variables of interest and were re-contacted 6-months later to see if they had engaged in online gambling during the intervening months. Approximately 26 % of social casino gamers reported having migrated to online gambling. Importantly, engagement in micro-transactions was the only unique predictor of migration from social casino gaming to online gambling. The implications for the potential harms associated with social casino gaming are discussed.
Footnotes
1
We assessed whether systematic differences existed at Time 1 on our main variables of interest and revealed a gender effect. As such, we included gender as a covariate in our binary logistic model. The inclusion of gender as a covariate did not change the results of our original model.
 
2
To assess whether significant differences in regards to demographics (e.g., gender, age, employment and ethnicity) existed between participants who migrated to online gambling and participants who did not make the migration, we ran a series of ANOVAs and Chi-Square analyses. The results suggest that gender was the only significant difference between participants who migrated to online gambling and those who did not χ 2(2, N = 99) = 6.99, p = .01. Specifically, more male (65.38 %) than female (34.62 %) social casino gamers migrated to online gambling.
 
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Metadata
Title
Do Social Casino Gamers Migrate to Online Gambling? An Assessment of Migration Rate and Potential Predictors
Authors
Hyoun S. Kim
Michael J. A. Wohl
Melissa M. Salmon
Rina Gupta
Jeffrey Derevensky
Publication date
01-12-2015
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of Gambling Studies / Issue 4/2015
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3602
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-014-9511-0

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