Attitude Towards Deposit Limits and Relationship with Their Account-Based Data Among a Sample of German Online Slots Players

Abstract

Social responsibility and duty of care have become major cornerstones for gambling operators. This has led to the introduction of many different responsible gambling tools such as limit-setting, mandatory play breaks, and personalized messaging. In the present study, the authors were given access to two secondary datasets provided by a German online slots game operator. The first dataset was from an online survey carried out by the gambling operator among 1000 of its players concerning their attitude towards deposit limits as well as self-reported problem gambling. In addition to the survey responses, the authors were given access to a second dataset of account-based data concerning each customer's wagers, wins, monetary deposits, and monetary withdrawals. These datasets were then combined. The majority of players had a positive attitude towards the maximum deposit monthly deposit limit which was introduced by the German State Treaty on Gambling in 2021. Players who disagreed with the maximum monthly deposit limit, deposited significantly more money in the 30 days prior to answering the survey questions compared to players who agreed with the monthly deposit limit. The tracking data found only 7.6% of players had deposited the maximum amount of money allowed in one month. However, 60.5% of players in the survey data said that they did so. Players who said that they continued to gamble after reaching the deposit limit wagered and deposited significantly more money in the 30 days prior to the survey compared to players who said they stopped gambling after reaching the deposit limit. Two-fifths of players said they continued to gamble after reaching the monthly deposit limit (42%). The majority of the players said they chose a personal deposit limit because it helped them to better control their gambling expenditure. A quarter of the players reported gambling problems using the Brief Biosocial Gambling Screen (27%). Self-reported problem gambling was not correlated with depositing, wagering or any other player tracking metric.

Keywords: Behavioral tracking data; Limit-setting; Problem gambling; Responsible gambling; Survey data.

Fig. 1

Distribution of the number of months since registration among players (N = 1000)

Fig. 2

Median amount of money wagered in the thirty days prior to answering the survey per answer category for the question “I feel positive towards the €1000 maximum deposit limit”. N.B. Due to issues of commercial sensitivity, actual amount of money wagered is not shown

Fig. 3

Median amount of money wagered in the thirty days prior to answering the survey per answer category for the question “I believe that a maximum deposit limit is relevant for me”. N.B. Due to issues of commercial sensitivity, actual amount of money wagered is not shown

Fig. 4

Median amount of money wagered in the thirty days prior to answering the survey per answer category for the question “I believe that generally I have a sufficient overview of my gambling expenditure”. N.B. Due to issues of commercial sensitivity, actual amount of money wagered is not shown

Fig. 5

Median amount of money wagered in the thirty days prior to answering the survey per answer category for the question “Deposit limits help me to maintain a sufficient overview of, and control over, how much money I lose”. N.B. Due to issues of commercial sensitivity, actual amount of money wagered is not shown