Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Department of Psychology and Public Health, Central Queensland University, 6 University Dr, Branyan, QLD 4670, Australia.
Addict Behav. 2021 Sep;120:106984. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106984. Epub 2021 May 11.
Many video games incorporate gambling-like elements into their design (and vice versa). Social casino games - a type of video game that mimics gambling activities-are one such example. In the current experimental research, we examined whether offering tangible rewards (i.e., rewards with value outside the game) in a social casino game was associated with increased social casino game play and subsequent gambling. Participants (N = 213, M = 36.5, 55.3% female) were recruited from CloudResearch. They were randomly assigned to either a reward condition (n = 109) in which, following a week of social casino game play, participants could trade in their virtual credits for a bonus, or a control condition in which the possibility of reward was not presented (n = 104). Following the week of play, all participants were then provided with an opportunity to gamble in an online roulette game with their study compensation. Participants in the reward condition placed more bets and bet higher credit amounts in the social casino game than participants in the control condition. In contrast, no differences were found between the two groups regarding their decision to gamble with their remuneration. Participants who elected to gamble reported higher problem gambling severity and gambling-related cravings. There were no differences in impulsivity. These results suggest that offering tangible rewards in social casino games may increase social casino game play but not necessarily the decision to gamble with real-world money.
许多电子游戏在其设计中融入了类似赌博的元素（反之亦然）。社交博彩游戏就是这样一个例子，它是一种模仿赌博活动的电子游戏。在当前的实验研究中，我们研究了在社交博彩游戏中提供有形奖励（即游戏外有价值的奖励）是否与增加社交博彩游戏的参与度以及随后的赌博行为有关。参与者（N=213，M=36.5，55.3%为女性）从 CloudResearch 招募。他们被随机分配到奖励条件组（n=109）或控制条件组（n=104）。在奖励条件组中，参与者在一周的社交博彩游戏后可以用虚拟信用换取奖金，而在控制条件组中则没有提供奖励的可能性。在一周的游戏之后，所有参与者都有机会在一个在线轮盘赌游戏中用他们的研究报酬进行赌博。奖励条件组的参与者在社交博彩游戏中下注更多，下注的信用额度也更高，而控制条件组的参与者则没有。相比之下，两组参与者在是否用报酬进行赌博的决定上没有差异。选择赌博的参与者报告了更高的赌博问题严重程度和与赌博相关的渴望。冲动性没有差异。这些结果表明，在社交博彩游戏中提供有形奖励可能会增加社交博彩游戏的参与度，但不一定会增加用真钱赌博的决定。
