Betting Menace: Riddle of Television Advertising and University Students Betting Behaviour

Purpose: To establish the influence of television’s testimonial advertisement technique on sports betting among the university students in Kenya. Methodology: The study used a mixed method design.  In this case a convergent parallel mixed methods design was used to ascertain the relationship between testimonial advertising and sports betting among the university students in Kenya. Piloting was done to check on validity and reliability of the data collected. This was then followed by data collection where the collected data was subjected to diagnostic test to check if the data were normally distributed.  Descriptive survey and inferential statistics were used in the analysis. The regression model was used to find out the correlation between testimonial advertising technique and sports betting among university students in Kenya. Findings: This study found out that there was a positive influence of testimonial advertising on sports betting among university students in Kenya. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: This study was grounded on elaboration likelihood model (ELM). This model was developed by Petty et al. (1983). The core assumption of the model is that in communication, there are two routes namely; central route and peripheral route (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). The study thus recommends that proper policies should be enacted to regulate betting advertisements in Kenya. On its contribution to practice, the study calls on the universities to come up with alternative activities that the students can engage in during leisure time to prevent them from sports betting. In addition, policy makers should consider implementing laws to control betting activities in the country. Consequently, the advertisers should remind the public that betting can be additive thus they should bet responsively.