The Relationship of Consumer Attitude and Government Regulations Towards Online Gambling Behavior in The Philippines

The Philippine gambling industry, and particularly online gaming, has recently emerged as a major driver of the country’s economy. The rise of this controversial industry has become a cause of concern for many Filipino citizens. For the past two decades, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has been a major driver of the Philippine economy. However, a new sector of the economy has emerged that appears poised to take over traditional BPOs: online gambling. With the emergence of online gambling, any citizen can simply log into a website and they can play the usual casino games like poker, roulette, and slot machines or even sports betting. Online gambling is just like having a wallet in your pocket right now and just waiting for the money to come in, you just pull out your cellphone and you gamble already right away, that easy. Technically, engaging in online gambling is legal unless operated by a Philippine-licensed offshore company. Unlike other countries, the Philippines does not have strict mandates against gambling. The research aims to cover if consumer attitude and government regulations are significantly proportion with the effect of online gambling behavior. Adding to that, the researcher has added an intervening variable which is promotional ads if it has a direct impact adopting online gambling behavior. By using a quantitative analysis, the study recorded 100 respondents residing in the Philippines and studying their opinion towards this new addictive behavior relating to money. The materials and resources collected have concluded that consumer attitude and government regulations have significant impact towards this unlikely behavior, while promotional ads remain irrelevant.

Does The Betting Industry Price Gender? Evidence from Professional Tennis

This research addresses the importance of gender in the pricing process of the sports betting industry. Specifically, we investigate the impact of gender in the prices that bookmakers offer for tennis matches. Despite widespread evidence of gender bias both in the practice of the sport and its media coverage, tennis is one of the sports that has done most to achieve equality. The analysis of 51,881 tennis matches reveals that betting firms quote higher prices for women's matches than for men's, even when considering uncertainty due to the surprise factor and the media attention. The separate analysis of two bookmakers strengthens the evidence for the role of media attention as a source of gender-related information asymmetry.

Case Report: A gambling-related suicide in rural Malawi

Background As in many other countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Malawi’s commercial gambling sector has grown considerably in recent years. Driven by the widespread availability of internet through mobile devices, the industry has penetrated both urban and rural settings. In Malawi the model commonly implemented by gambling companies is similar to that used by mobile phone operators. Agents equipped with cellular devices connect to providers’ servers to place wagers for customers and print receipts using simple printers attached to their devices. This has produced lucrative returns for providers. While increasing attention is being paid to this trend, most research focusses on sports betting and there is a deficit of papers that document gambling-related harms. Methods Here we present a narrative case report of a 16-year-old boy, ‘Wati’ (pseudonym), who lived in rural Malawi and took his own life after gambling and losing money that did not belong to him. As his community is part of a demographic surveillance site, a verbal autopsy was conducted, later supplemented with interviews with Wati’s close friend and uncle, to whom his mother referred us. We triangulated data from these three sources to create a narrative case report of Wati’s suicide and its relationship to his gambling practices. Results We found that the gambling harms leading up to Wati’s suicide were recurrent, that his gambling practices were diverse (lottery, football betting, digital games and cards) and that signs of distress were apparent before his suicide. Conclusions From this case report, we learn that underage individuals participate in gambling in Malawi, can develop harmful habits and that their gambling is not confined to sports betting. We also learn that there is a lack of accessible services for people who develop harmful gambling practices. Wati could have benefited from such services and they may have saved his life.

Examining the effects of online sports betting on the perceived economic wellbeing of student-athletes

The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of online sports betting on the perceived economic wellbeing of student-athletes using the regression analysis with an interaction effect used to test the effect of demographic variables on the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Correlation analysis was used to test the relationship between independent variables. The findings reveal that there was a positive and significant association3 between gambling severity and economic wellbeing. The study revealed that students’ sports bet online with large amounts of money to get the feeling of excitement. Sports betting leads to overspending which can disrupt home life to such an extent that it has some social effects such as the break-up of families. Sometimes due to sports betting the only deceptive course of action that seems to remain too often may lead the bettor to commit suicide.