The Effect of a Mandatory Play Break on Subsequent Gambling Behavior among British Online Casino Players: A Large-Scale Real-World Study

In recent years, various novel responsible gambling (RG) tools have been implemented to aid harm-minimization. One such RG tool has been the implementation of enforced mandatory play breaks. Despite many responsible gambling operators using mandatory play breaks, only three previous studies have examined their efficacy and the findings were mixed. Therefore, the present investigation was a large-scale real-world study which was designed to see whether a 60-minute mandatory play break influenced subsequent depositing and wagering. The authors were given access to 27 days of player data prior to the introduction of a mandatory play break and 27 days of player data after the mandatory play break was introduced. The study comprised British online gamblers from Skillonnet (a European online gambling operator). Between July 23 and September 15 (2021), 2,021 players deposited at least ten times or more on a calendar day, at least once. The 2,201 players generated 2,994 corresponding events (i.e., the depositing of money at least 10 times in one day). The percentage of players who stopped depositing money as a consequence of the mandatory play break rose from 27% to 68% on the day of a play break. Moreover, the percentage of players who stopped wagering as a consequence of the mandatory play break rose from 0.1% to 45% on the day of a play break. The findings of the present study demonstrated that a 60-minute mandatory play break impacts players’ depositing and wagering immediately after the play break. This means that a mandatory hour-long play break in an online casino setting appears to prevent overspending during a short period of time. The effects of a 60-minute mandatory break on the next day’s behavior were inconclusive.