The American Gaming Association (AGA) is attempting to make it easier to evaluate the effectiveness of responsible gambling messaging with its new Responsible Gaming Intervention Effectiveness Scale (RG-IES).
The AGA, in cooperation with Bally’s, BetMGM and FanDuel, announced the RG-IES on Sept. 11. The scale has been developed by professors Dr. Jonathan Ross Gilbert and Dr. Marla Stafford, whom the AGA and the three operators provided with funding and access to thousands of players to test certain RG messaging.
The scale provides academics, industry members and others interested in responsible gambling with a new, research-based tool they can use to evaluate responsible gaming messages.
“While no single scale or measurement tool can fully capture effectiveness in this area, we believe this new scale is an important starting point in evaluating whether or not a message has the potential to resonate with the public and are grateful to the researchers who led this important effort,” said the AGA.
The association added that it hopes the RG-IES will serve as “a first step into further research on how to best tailor these communications to players.”
The new research and scale was published the week after the AGA stated that it expects a significant uptick in NFL betting this season, forecasting a 31% jump in wagers on the league.
RG messaging needs to be more positive and engaging
In a detailed explanation of the scale, the AGA defined responsible gaming as concerning the concept of reducing potential harms (financial, psychological, relational, legal) for gamblers and using gambling “for fun and entertainment’s sake while reducing potential harm.:”
Gilbert and Stafford concluded that RG messages designed by casinos and sportsbooks need to be more positive, fun and engaging. At the same time, they should avoid what the researchers called “the clinical nature of traditional responsible gambling messages.”
The RG-IES allows users to assess the effectiveness of messages that are intended to meaningfully impact the feelings and behaviors of gaming consumers. Respondents are asked to rate how strongly they agree with 15 predetermined statements about a piece of RG advertising on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). A respondent’s scores in each category are then added and divided by 15.
Any message scoring below the scale’s mean of 4.0 would not be considered particularly effective, said the researchers, “and should be redesigned to better reflect the desired characteristics of a responsible gaming message.”
“The development of the RG-IES allows organizations to reliably and validly assess potential responsible gaming messages,” concluded the researchers. “By utilizing the entire scale to assess potential messages, organizations and operators can engage in proper research to ensure effective messages.
It is our hope that this tool will be used for the development of creative and effective messages to ensure individuals will attend to messages and process them as intended. Taking these actions will also significantly improve the measurement of responsible gaming message effectiveness and the communication of data demonstrative of controlled gambling.”
