The Responsible Gaming and Research Act (RGRA) mandates that casino and sports betting operators in West Virginia provide anonymized data to West Virginia University. WVU will collaborate with the State Lottery Commission’s Department of Human Services to analyze the data. This partnership aims to enhance the understanding of problematic and addictive gambling tendencies. This will help with the drafting of future legislation geared towards promoting safer gambling practices.
Sheila Moran, Director of Marketing and Communication for behavioral health organization, First Choice Services, said of the Act:
West Virginia House Committee Passes Responsible Gaming Research Act West Virginia House Committee Passes Responsible Gaming Research Act“The last national major prevalence study was done in 1999. Now, think about how much gambling has expanded in since 1999. Quite a bit. So that’s the best statistics we have. There’s never been a prevalence study done here in West Virginia.
Most of the research that we have in the gambling addiction field is based on self-report, and we all know that sometimes people aren’t forthright in self-report. You know, they’ve done studies on things like alcohol consumption and physical activity and church attendance. And when they compare what people say they do versus what the data shows, there is a discrepancy. So no surprise. Same thing with gambling, especially problem gambling.
Therefore, I think it would be very interesting to have the actual data from how people are truly behaving online, how they’re spending money. We know that there are certain tells in the data that will indicate problem gambling, and we would really like to know how much of that we’re dealing with that would help us, help us know how to target our efforts.”
Olivia has worked as an editor and writer for major brands across multiple niches. She now focuses on the iGaming and sports betting industries.