Study Urges U.S. And Canada To Regulate Online Gambling

Online gambling is a major factor around the world. Whether the United States and Canada want to admit it or not, Internet gambling is a major force that exists whether it is outlawed or not.

The potential danger of online gambling is escalated without there being any regulations. people have the opportunity to get themselves in trouble through online gambling much more so than if the industry was regulated.

These have been the findings of a recent study that was done between the University of Nevada in Las Vegas and the University of Western Ontario in Canada. The study that was done suggests that regulating the industry is the best way to minimize the potential dangers of online gambling.

Gambling on the Internet is viewed as much more dangerous than casino gambling. In a casino, a gambler must actually go and stay at the casino. On the Internet, however, a gambler can make playing part of their daily routines.

"When not seen as reserved solely as behavior for an outing or a special occasion, gambling is more likely to become a pernicious, insidiously integrated component of a consumer's life," said June Cotte, one of the study's authors and an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Western Ontario.

The study took ten casino gamblers and twenty online gamblers and interviewed them. They also showed the subjects pictures to get reactions on how they made them feel. Once the study was complete, the authors gave recommendations to how to curb the online gambling problem.

They suggested that in Canada, that government sponsors get into the market and regulate the industry. In the U.S., the study suggests that the same people that regulate Las Vegas, the big corporations, do the same in the online market.

Several potential regulations were discussed. One is a cooling off period, where gamblers cannot continually just pump money into their online accounts. Another, of course, was proper age identification checks upon signing up with an online gambling site.



2008-07-16