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. 2025 Jun;41(2):735-751.
doi: 10.1007/s10899-025-10384-0. Epub 2025 Apr 1.

The Profiles of People who Do not Engage in Positive Play while Gambling

Nigel E Turner  1   2 , Yosra AlMakadma  3   4   5   6 , Darren R Christensen  7
Affiliations

The Profiles of People who Do not Engage in Positive Play while Gambling

Nigel E Turner et al. J Gambl Stud. 2025 Jun.

Abstract

Background: Positive Play describes non-problematic gambling behaviour. The term avoids the ambiguity of the term 'Responsible Gambling', and the negative connotations associated with 'Problem Gambling'. This purpose of the paper was to identify demographic groups who score consistently low on the positive play in order to determine where interventions are most needed.

Methods: The study is a secondary analysis of general population data, collected online by AskingCanadians on behalf of Ontario Lottery and Gaming that examined data on positive play and harm reduction related to gambling. The paper included the analysis of survey data from players who reported engaging in one of the four target gambling activities (N = 3701): Lotteries (n = 1832), casinos (n = 1272), online (n = 300), and charity bingo (n = 297).

Results: People who scored low on all four of the Positive Play scales were more likely to be young, male, single, have a low or middle range income, have at least some university education, and to have been born outside of Canada. In addition, people who scored low on Positive Play scale were more likely to play online games or charity games compared to lotteries. These findings were mostly consistent across game types however due to the small sample sizes for online gamblers and charitable gamblers, some effects did not reach significance.

Discussion: Awareness efforts for Positive Play should be directed at younger players, males, and recent immigrants. In addition, more effort in encouraging Positive Play needs to be directed at online gamblers and bingo gamblers.

Keywords: Demographics; Harm Reduction; Positive Play; Problem Gambling.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate: For the original survey, the participants electronically signed an informed consent form. The secondary analysis was reviewed and approved by the research ethics board of Centre for Addiction and Mental Health as protocol 045/2922. For more information about the AskingCanadians survey panel go to the following web site: https://portal.askingcanadiansprojects.com/faq/acp . Consent for Publication: The survey consent form included consent to publish. From the consent form that that data ”will be used in the aggregate for marketing initiatives such as enhancing digital marketing solutions, creating data marketing products, and/or publishing industry reports.” Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Turner, in the past three years he has received funding from the Canadian Institute for Health Research, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MoHLTC), Gambling Research Exchange (GREO) and Ontario Lottery and Gaming (through GREO). In all cases, the contract included guarantees of independence and intellectual property rights for the researcher and the funders made no attempt to influence the study at any point. The author has also acted as a consultant on gambling problems for various government and legal entities, reviewed grant applications and articles for publication.

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