Why is gambling harm about 1⁄3 lower here?
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Why is gambling harm about a third lower in Western Australia?
A national phone survey of 15,000 adults compared WA with the rest of Australia. Everywhere else, 192,768 gaming machines sit in 11 casinos, 2,953 hotels and 1,840 clubs. WA keeps every machine in one casino, in Perth (2,466 machines).
More people in WA gambled in the last year (62.9% vs 56.3%), but only 8.7% played the machines, against 17.3% elsewhere. Gambling problems and harm were about one-third lower.
Nobody banned gambling. The machines were kept out of easy reach.
Sources
Russell AMT et al. J Behav Addict 2023. doi:10.1556/2006.2023.00044
What the study says
- “Gambling participation was higher in WA, but EGM participation was approximately half that of the rest of Australia. Aggregate gambling problems and harm were about one-third lower in WA, and self-reported attribution of harm from EGMs by gamblers and affected others was 2.7× and 4× lower, respectively.”
- “In all other jurisdictions, a total of 192,768 EGMs can be accessed in 11 casinos, 2,953 hotels and 1,840 licensed clubs (Australasian Gaming Council, 2021).”
- “In contrast, the sole casino in WA has 2,466 EGMs and 350 gaming tables”
- “In the rest of Australia, 53.9% of those harmed by another person's gambling reported that EGMs were the form that caused the most harm compared to 13.3% in WA.”
Where it falls short
A comparison between states, not a before-and-after.
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