Availability restrictions and mandatory precommitment in land-based gambling: effects on online substitutes and total consumption in longitudinal sales data.

BACKGROUND: Gambling causes important harms in societies. According to the public health approach, the most effective policies to reduce harms target full populations. Availability restrictions and mandatory precommitment are among the most effective measures. However, restrictions on the availability of some gambling products or channels may also be offset by increased consumption in other products. Substitution effects can have negative public health impacts due to differing harm potential across different gambling products. This paper uses longitudinal sales data (2019-2022) from the Finnish gambling monopoly Veikkaus. During the observation period, the availability of gambling was restricted in Finland due to subsequent waves of Covid-19-related restrictions. In addition, the gambling monopoly introduced mandatory precommitment to land-based EGMs. We focus on how these restrictive policy changes impacted the total consumption of gambling and possible substitution effects. METHODS: The Finnish gambling monopoly provided weekly theoretical loss data per gambling product category and gambling channel (online, land-based) for the period of January 2019 - July 2022 based on a statutory obligation. We analysed the effects of availability restrictions and other public health measures on the consumption of different products using descriptive time series and regression analyses. We compared the sale of land-based products to online equivalents at product category level and included main policy change periods in the models. RESULTS: Total consumption of gambling declined during 2019-2022 mainly due to reduced land-based electronic gambling machine (EGM) consumption. Declines in land-based EGM sales were not offset by online alternatives or other close substitutes in the long term. However, during the first wave of Covid-19, there was an observable substitution of land-based table games by online alternatives and land-based horse betting and possibly sports betting by online horse betting. Overall, the results also show that Covid-19 functioned as a boost to an already existing trend of increasing digitalisation of gambling. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides empirical support for the effectiveness of public health-oriented policies in reducing the total consumption of gambling. Availability restrictions and mandatory precommitment are therefore likely to also reduce the burden of harms of gambling to individuals and societies.

The Winners and the Losers: Tax Incidence of Gambling in Finland.

Gambling markets have grown rapidly for the last few decades. As a result, gambling is also a very important and common source of tax income for many governments these days. This raises a question about the overall fairness of the gambling taxation systems. In this paper, we aim to study the tax incidence of gambling in Finland. First, we analyse who are the expected payers of the gambling taxes and second, who are expected to be the receivers of the gambling-tax based contributions. In the first part of the study, we analyse the demographic incidence of gambling taxation by using the Finnish gambling 2015 population survey combined with registry based variables. Our data contains 3776 individuals. In the second part of the study, we use data of county level gambling-taxation based contributions to different organisations to analyse how the gambling expenditures are distributed back to citizens in a form of public spending. This study shows that different socio-demographic factors have diverse association with the decisions whether or how much to gamble. The results also suggest that more disadvantaged, i.e. lower income, less educated and rural area living, individuals are expected to be the "losers" of the Finnish gambling taxation system. In other words, the Finnish gambling system is found to be regressive by nature.

Compulsory School Achievement and Future Gambling Expenditure: A Finnish Population-Based Study.

BACKGROUND: Gambling is associated with many conditions that can compromise young people's health and wellbeing, such as substance use and poor school achievement. Conversely, low school achievement can be linked to lower socio-economic position. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine whether compulsory school achievement is linked with gambling participation and gambling expenditure (GE) later in youth and whether GE is linked with lower socio-economic position. METHODS: The Finnish Gambling Harms survey data (n = 7186) were used. The data were collected in three regions during spring 2017. Participants aged 18-29 years old were selected from the data. Past-year GE was examined using two measures: weekly gambling expenditure (WGE, in €) and relative gambling expenditure (RGE, in %). Logistic regression and log-linear regression models for past-year gambling, WGE and RGE were created. RESULTS: Persons who had no more than a mediocre grade point average (GPA) had a 25% higher WGE and 30% higher RGE in 2016 than those who had an outstanding GPA in the compulsory school. Compared with persons with an outstanding GPA, those with a satisfactory to very good GPA spent 13% more on gambling, and their RGE was 17% higher. Additionally, those with lower socio-economic status (SES) had a higher WGE and RGE compared with higher SES. CONCLUSIONS: Even after controlling for other crucial background characteristics, early life success, in the form of compulsory school outcomes, seems to correlate with gambling expenditures later in youth. This suggests that the gambling behaviour can be linked to the cognitive ability of an individual. Our findings also imply that gambling could be more heavily concentrated on individuals that are already more socially disadvantaged. However, it is worth noting that individual factors such as traumas, antisocial personality, anxiety and depression are all associated with gambling and poor academic achievement. Overall, this suggests that various educational tools at a younger age can be effective in preventing gambling-related problems in later life.