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Gambling advertising is everywhere. Even people who have never placed a bet are familiar with slogans like “Gamble responsibly,” “When the fun stops” and “Take time to think”.

But these industry-developed messages could soon change, with the government and the gambling regulator working to create independent warnings for gambling, much like those found on tobacco and alcohol packaging.

Our research has long argued that such changes are needed. Australia took this step in in 2023, imposing health warnings for gambling advertisements and websites.

By studying how gamblers perceive Australia’s messaging, we’ve identified which warnings are likely to be the most effective in deterring people from gambling. Australia’s warnings fall roughly into four categories: loss-based, positive emotional messages, counter-industry messages and self-appraisal.

Loss-based messages warn people about the likelihood of losing money from gambling. The Australian examples include: “Chances are you’re about to lose,” “You win some. You lose more” and “What are you prepared to lose today? Set a deposit limit.”

In a paper published earlier this year, we asked 4,000 gamblers to rate ten pre-existing and novel (created for the study) loss-based messages. We found that the best-ranked message was the novel “99% of gamblers lose in the long run.”

This message was based on a gambling company executive candidly telling a UK parliamentary committee: “99% of the customers who play on our sites will lose, so you’re probably losing more if you play more.” Our findings suggest that concrete information is received better than the vaguer Australian messages.

Read more: The 'responsible gambling' mantra does nothing to prevent harm. It probably makes things worse

Positive emotional messages, like Australia’s “Imagine what you could be buying instead,” communicate the positives of not gambling.

Following a similar methodology to the previous study, we found that two novel positive messages scored highest: “Quitting gambling can help you with the relationships that matter the most to you” and “Don’t gamble on your happiness: do something else that will make you happy today.”

Such messages reflect how harms from gambling losses are not just financial, but also psychological, and health and relationship-related. The Australian warning scored joint third overall – good, but not the very best.

Loss-based messages appeared more effective for people experiencing low levels of gambling harm, while positive emotional messages resonated more strongly with those at high harm levels. This finding was based on participants’ responses to statements like “this message is relevant to me” and “this message makes me want to gamble less”.

Self-reflection

We also conducted a study on the third category of messages: counter-industry. These challenge industry narratives regarding gambling and personal responsibility.

Here, the three highest-rated messages came from existing sources, including, “The main purpose of gambling companies is to maximise profit, generated through customer losses” (from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority anti-gambling harms campaign), and the succinct “Gambling products are designed to be addictive” (from Gambling Understood).

Importantly, counter-industry messages began to appear relevant to participants at lower levels of gambling harm than the previous two categories.

The last category of messages is designed to help people to think about their own gambling differently and therefore change their behaviour. These are called self-appraisal messages: “Think. Is this a bet you really want to place?”, “What’s gambling really costing you?” and “What are you really gambling with?”

Self-appraisal messages have a long history in gambling research. These messages have been shown to reduce gambling when shown as pop-ups on slot machines. We are planning to test these in an upcoming study and compare the best performers to those in the other three categories.

Overall, we know that different warnings work better for different audiences. But even if there were truly one “best” gambling warning, policymakers should continue to create new messages.

Messages lose their effectiveness as they are repeated. Research shows that warnings about addictive and harmful products are particularly susceptible to these “wear-out” effects. Novel messages are therefore more memorable.

But given the life-shattering toll that gambling addiction can take, any changes to the industry-backed messages are welcome.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Philip Newall, University of Bristol; Jamie Torrance, Swansea University, and Leonardo Weiss-Cohen, University of Nottingham

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Philip Newall was a member of the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling from 2022 to 2025 – an advisory group of the Gambling Commission in Great Britain. In the last three years, Philip has contributed to research projects funded by the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling, Alberta Gambling Research Institute, BA/Leverhulme, Canadian Institute for Health Research, Clean Up Gambling, Gambling Research Australia, and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. Philip has received other funding from the Belgium Ministry of Justice, the Economic and Social Research Institute, the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling and Greo Evidence Insights.

Jamie Torrance has received funding from Gambling Research Exchange Ontario, the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling (AFSG), the International Centre for Responsible Gambling and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Leonardo Cohen received open-access funding from Gambling Research Exchange Ontario (GREO) and has received funding from British Academy/Leverhulme.