Co-designing Responsible Gambling Messages with People who Gamble to Promote Safer Play Behaviors

Principal Investigators: Seth P. McCullock, Ph.D.
Funder: International Center for Responsible Gaming
Timeline: 2025 – 2028

Responsible gambling messages are intended to help gamblers make more informed decisions about their own gambling behaviors. These messages vary significantly in their form and function. However, responsible gambling messages rarely use evidence-based public health messaging strategies. Likewise, responsible gambling message design rarely seems to incorporate the perspectives of gamblers. These limitations are likely to have had consequences on the impact of responsible gambling messaging. Evidence shows that responsible gambling messages can also elicit feelings of annoyance and irritation that unintentionally promote gambling behaviors. This presents a significant problem as it indicates that responsible gambling messages, in their current form, are not fulfilling their intended purpose. Accordingly, this project consists of a set of studies that will (1) systematically evaluate gamblers’ and research experts’ preferences for responsible gambling message content, (2) co-design a series of ten responsible gambling messages with a community advisory board composed of people who gamble or used to gamble, (3) pilot test those messages among people who gamble to make improvements, (4) longitudinally test the efficacy of co-designed messages on participants’ gambling frequency, gambling intentions, and counterintuitive factors that could reduce message effectiveness and (5) test the effectiveness of the co-designed messages against messages available to the public.