Online vs. In Person Gambling: Does Exposure to Brick-and-Mortar Gambling Shops Lead to Increased Online Gambling?

Abstract

The rise of online gambling in Great Britain in the past two decades has caused increased public health concerns. This study adds to existing evidence on physical gambling environment as a driver of gambling participation, using a 2022 national survey. With respect to gambling-related risks, existing evidence suggests a relationship, albeit complex, between gambling opportunities and increased levels of related problems. The study cuts into this complexity by factorising the risk of online gambling, and leveraging a double negative control design to estimate the causal effect of exposure to physical gambling shops on individuals' online gambling participation. Our findings show that, for the survey sample, an increase in shop exposure predicts an increased average risk of online gambling. Measuring shop exposure by distance to nearest shops, we find that for all-type gambling (i.e gaming and betting), being in the highest versus lowest exposure decile raises the risk of online gambling by around 1.49 fold for the general population, and around 1.69 fold for the rural-suburban residents. These observations are in line with existing research reporting gambling risk differentials across exposure levels. Besides contributing causal estimates of these risk differences on average and for urban, rural residents, the study provides novel insights on the interpretations of the main findings in terms of partial substitution between online vs. land-based gambling. The results and methods from this study are relevant for theoretical as well as policy debates on possible interventions to prevent and mitigate online gambling harms.