Empowering Responsible Online Gambling by Real-time Persuasive Information Systems

Online gambling, unlike other mediums of problem- atic and addictive behaviours, such as tobacco and alcohol, offers unprecedented opportunities for building information systems that are able to monitor and understand a user’s behaviour in real-time and adapt persuasive messages and interactions that would fit their personal profile and usage context. Online gambling industry usually provides Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) meant mainly to enable third-party applications to network with their gambling services and enhance a user’s gambling experience. In this industrial practice and experience paper, we advocate that such API’s can also be used to retrieve gamblers’ online data, such as browsing and betting history, promotions and available offers and use it to build more intel- ligent and proactive responsible gambling information systems. We report on our industrial experience in this field and make the argument that data available for persuasive marketing and usability should, under specific usage conditions, also be made available for responsible gambling information systems. This principle would provide equal opportunities for both directions. We discuss the psychological foundations of our proposed solution and the risks and challenges typically found when building such a software-assisted intervention, persuasion and emotion regulation technology. We also shed light on its potential implications from the perspectives of social corporate responsibility and data protection. We finally propose a conceptual architecture to demonstrate our vision and explain how it can be implemented. In the wider context, the paper is meant to provide insights on building behavioural awareness and regulation information systems in relation to problematic digital media usage

Problematic Attachment to Social Media: the Psychological States vs Usage Styles

—Many people worldwide rely on social media to satisfy their social needs for relatedness, learning and enhancing selfesteem. However, over-reliance on social media often results in problematic attachment, which risks personal, social and financial wellbeing. From a design perspective, we argue that social media can be improved with tools to manage such problematic attachment and help users reform their interaction style, social expectations and online identity to restore a healthy reliance. Designing such behaviour change tools can be challenging due to the characteristics of people with problematic behaviours, e.g. denial, relapse and cognitive dissonance. This paper explores the role of social media in such attachment and reveals associated psychological states. Our method provides an ecologically valid exploration through employing diary studies as a data collection method, aiming to introduce countermeasures for problematic attachment in future social media desig

When People are Problematically Attached to Social Media: How Would the Design Matter?

Social technology, in particular, social media has increasingly become part of individual’s life. People rely on social media interaction to relate with other people and satisfy their leisure or behavioural support purposes. Features such as those presented in the Honeycomb ecology, e.g. sharing, profiling and reputation, are used as means to that end. Recent designs of technology embed social features in them, enabling people to talk to the machine and interact with it as a sentient being, e.g. chatbot and robots, or use it as a mediator for social interaction, e.g. Social Internet of Things (SIoT). However, we argue that over-reliance on social media may result in a problematic attachment to it leading to a negative impact on users’ wellbeing. We conduct a multi-stages study to explore the negative psychological states that social media features can trigger. We mainly employ diary studies trying to increase the ecological validity of our data. We also discuss the enrichment of social media with tools to aid people in staying in control of their attachment and the risks such tools can introduce to user experience as well as their behaviour change process

Procrastination on Social Networking Sites: Combating by Design

Procrastination refers to a voluntary postponement that prevents people from performing their tasks and can hurt productivity and wellbeing. Procrastination might occur due to a lack of motivation to perform tasks or due to the low self-control that people might have over their time and task management. Social Networking Sites (hereafter SNS) are designed to enable their users to engage in online interaction for different purposes such as increasing popularity or exploring information. SNS embed influence and persuasion techniques to attract users which can make them a medium for procrastination where some users fail to maintain a desirable level of self-control over their usage. However, we argue that advances in persuasive technology and gamification techniques can be utilised to augment SMS and help users to regain self-control over their procrastination. Implementing these techniques correctly means that users can still enjoy accessing SNS while maintaining a desirable level of control over their procrastination. Building these antiprocrastination tools, however, is a challenging design activity due to their potential of triggering negative side-effects such as reactance and workarounds, and affecting the overall user experience. In this paper, we conduct user studies, consisting of an exploratory stage using focus groups, diary study and interviews and followed by a design stage based mainly on codesign sessions. Our studies’ participants self-declared having a problematic degree of procrastination on SNS, to explore procrastination countermeasure techniques that can augment the future designs of SNS and how best to apply them

Mind the Gap: Interrupting Dissociation of Players Through Real-Time Digital Tasks During Online Gambling.

Background: When people engage in online gambling, they often lose track of time and money spent which is called a “dissociation state”. Literature suggests that intermittent and dynamic messages that interrupt a task can capture the attentional focus. As interactions increase awareness of the here and now, they may be effective in breaking the players’ dissociation state during online gambling and consequently minimise the potential of gambling related harm. To this respect, in this study we investigated the effectiveness of four types of digital tasks (cognitive, dialogue, informative, and standard tasks) in interrupting the dissociation of players during online gambling. Methods: 50 participants were recruited from the general population who were 18 years old and over, fluent in English and scored no more than 8 (which is the cut-off for high-risk gambling) on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). Participants responded to an online survey with demographic questions and PGSI. Eligible participants were invited to the computer based online experiment at the lab where they were randomised to five different digital task groups (experimental groups: cognitive, dialogue, informative, standard; and control group: no task) and they received the digital tasks as an interruption while they were playing online slot gambling on a dummy account on the computer. Participants’ response times to the interruptions were recorded during online gambling. After the gambling session their level of dissociation and their acceptance of the digital tasks were measured by using Jacob’s Dissociation Questionnaire (JDQ) and the Acceptability Questionnaire (both Likert scale and open-ended questions) respectively. Results: The analysis revealed that there was a significant main effect of interruptions in terms of response times F (1, 36) = 6.52, p = .015, and a significant interaction between the two interruptions and the digital tasks F (3, 36) = 4.54, p = .008. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the digital tasks in terms of total response times to two interruptions F (3, 36) = 1.81, p = .16. On the other hand, there was a significant effect of the digital tasks on the dissociation level of participants for the five groups F (4, 45) = 15, p <.001. Cognitive tasks (M = 1.30, SD = 0.82) interrupted the dissociation of players more compared to the other digital tasks. Additionally, there was a significant effect of digital tasks on acceptability for the four groups F (3, 36) = 27.1, p < .001. According to the results of acceptability questionnaires, while players accepted the cognitive tasks the most (M = 25.1, SD = 2.73), standard tasks were accepted the least by the participants (M = 38, SD = 3.86). The qualitative data from the open-ended questions in the Acceptability Questionnaire was analysed using Thematic Analysis. Five main themes were generated: 1. distraction, 2. awareness, 3. user experience, 4. considerations for design and 5. considerations for technology. Implications: Cognitive and dialogue digital tasks could be potentially useful digital tools to interrupt players’ dissociation during online gambling and to minimise gambling related harm. These novel digital tasks might be used in online gambling related prevention and intervention strategies in the field

Estratégias de persuasão em apps de apostas desportivas: estudo de caso Placard

Dissertação de mestrado apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Audiovisual e Multimédia.Atualmente, qualquer indivíduo está exposto a uma panóplia de agentes persuasores que podem assumir as mais variadas formas, entre as quais, sob a forma de aplicação móvel. O conceito de tecnologia persuasiva continua a gerar discórdias e diversas opiniões, tanto do lado do emissor, ao configurar um sistema persuasivo, como do lado do recetor, responsável por aceitar e incutir as iniciativas persuasivas. Tendo como estudo de caso a aplicação de apostas desportivas Placard, a presente dissertação recorre a um método misto através de recolha de dados com entrevistas semiestruturadas a responsáveis pela gestão da app e inquérito por questionário aos utilizadores da app Placard, compondo uma amostra de 70 inquiridos. Os principais resultados permitiram concluir que, por mais que uma tecnologia persuasiva seja idealizada, programada e desenhada para alterar um determinado comportamento, atitude ou crença, esta estará sempre dependente do recetor da mesma, bem como dos diferentes fatores que influenciam a sua decisão em aceitar, ou não, as intenções persuasivas. A própria plataforma persuasiva também necessita de proporcionar uma boa user experience, de forma a não ser resistida e, por sua vez, refutada.ABSTRACT: Nowadays, every individual is exposed to a multitude of persuasive agents, which can take many different forms, including that of a mobile app. The concept of persuasive technology still generates disagreements and different opinions, both on the sender’s side, by setting up a persuasive system, and on the receiver’s side, who is responsible for accepting and instilling the persuasive initiatives. Having as a case study the sports betting app Placard, this investigation uses mixed methods through data collection using semi-structured interviews with those responsible for the app’s management and a survey to Placard’s app users, composing a sample of 70 respondents. The main results allowed us to conclude that, no matter how much persuasive technology is idealized, programmed, and designed to change a certain behaviour, attitude or belief, it will always depend on the receiver, as well as on the different factors that influence their decision on whether or not to accept the persuasive intentions. The persuasive platform itself also needs to provide a good user experience in order to not be resisted and, consequently, refuted.N/

Big data in the production of ‘Safe Gamblers’ and a sustainable gambling industry: a genealogy of gambling regulation in Great Britain

For hundreds of years in Great Britain, the state has been concerned with the regulation of commercial gambling. The methods of regulation, however, have varied significantly from prohibition under the criminal law to a free market approach allowing the natural laws of competition to operate. In recent years, advances in technology and big data analytics, originally developed by the industry for the maximisation of profits, have been welcomed as a novel approach to protecting gamblers from harm. Despite the disparate nature of the various approaches to the regulation of gambling during the course of history, this thesis aims to show that there is a common thread which runs throughout. Applying a Foucauldian lens, in particular using Michel Foucault’s later work on governmentality, this study argues that gambling regulation in Great Britain has, since the earliest official attempts to legislate on the activity, been concerned with the formation of a particular type of subject, who ‘knows’ certain ‘truths’ about gambling and behaves in accordance with those ‘truths’. Whilst this subject naturally varies in form across different periods in time, it is well-illustrated by Sir Frederick Flood during a House of Commons debate in 1818, when gambling was regarded as a vice to be suppressed: […] nothing could be more injurious to property, reputation, and life than the vice of gaming. It had brought many individuals to ruin, had produced great private misery, and had deprived the country of many persons who might otherwise have been useful and valuable members of society.1 Applying a genealogical approach, this research illuminates the ways in which gambling regulation has operated to create subjects who hold particular views about gambling and conduct their own behaviour in accordance with those views, so that they become ‘useful and valuable members of society’. Each chapter examines one of the discrete approaches to gambling regulation since 1541, defined in this thesis as a ‘regime’ of government. Over time, the techniques used in this process of subjection have evolved into a complex framework of mechanisms, which uses gamblers’ ‘freedom’ as a resource in the production of useful and valuable subjects. In this way, it is argued that notwithstanding the underlying ‘liberal’ ethos of the present statutory framework under the Gambling Act 2005, examined in Part II, gamblers today are subject to greater levels of regulation than when commercial gambling was unlawful. This is particularly true for online gamblers, whose conduct is regulated in increasingly intimate and pervasive ways through the application of continuous surveillance and big data analytics to facilitate a ‘safer’ form of gambling and protect ‘at risk’ gamblers from harm. The present regime, as examined in Chapter Four, thus operates to produce gambling subjects who autonomously gamble in a way which is considered ‘safe’. It also produces responsible operators who employ their data-driven technological capabilities to protect those gamblers who may be ‘at risk’, for example of spending more than they can afford. Though on the face of it, this appears to be a particularly caring, benevolent approach to regulation, this thesis seeks to problematise the apparently taken-for-granted assumption that the data-driven technologies, originally developed for commercial purposes, should be repurposed in this way. Instead, it is argued that in ‘protecting’ gamblers, these technologies also play a central role in their subjection. Thus, on closer examination of the present regime, this thesis identifies an inherent perversity whereby gamblers have effectively become a resource to be utilised in a safe, sustainable way in order to secure a sustainable gambling economy

Problematic attachment to social media: lived experience and behavioural archetypes.

Social media are widely used by people to help satisfying personal and social needs. Examples include the enhancement of self-image, self-esteem, complementarity, relatedness and popularity. However, the relationship with social media can become problematic and lead to hurt various aspects of life, including wellbeing, psychological and emotional state and sociability. Existing literature provided evidence that obsessive and excessive use of social media can be associated with behavioural addiction symptoms such as conflict, mood modification, salience, tolerance, withdrawal and relapse. Research has also shown that social media can be equipped or augmented with tools to help users who are willing to change their problematic attachment behaviour. Designing such behaviour change tools can be challenging because people differ in their problematic attachment to social media. Unlike existing literature, which focuses on understanding the psychological correlates of social media activity and reasons that facilitate attachment. This thesis aims to explore the real-world experience of people who have a problematic attachment to social media and the role of social media design in such attachment. In order to achieve the goal of the thesis, multi-phase qualitative studies with people who experienced problematic attachment have been conducted. This helped to achieve a deep understanding of the role of social media in facilitating problematic attachment and reveal emotions and psychological states associated with it as well as the social media design features which contribute to triggering such states. The findings emerged through multi-phase qualitative studies helped developing user archetypes characterising how people differ in their problematic attachments to social media. These behavioural archetypes are intended to help the design process of software-assisted solutions to keep a healthy relationship with social media. The thesis evaluates how the archetypes can help a design team communication and engagement and aid a more creative and efficient design process