Trial reportAddiction (Abingdon, England)2026
Direct gambling marketing, direct harm: A randomised experiment.
Trial report in Addiction (Abingdon, England), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Direct gambling marketing, direct harm: A randomised experiment.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Trial
- Regulatory Whack-a-mole: A Rapid Scoping Review of Gambling Marketing Restrictions and their (in)Effectiveness.Current addiction reports · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsWhether gambling marketing has a causal effect on harm is of regulatory interest. Direct marketing offers (emails, push notifications and text messages) are frequently received by people with active gambling accounts, but they can opt out. This study aimed to test whether opting out of direct marketing reduces betting and short-term gambling harms in a real-world gambling environment.
designStratified randomised field experiment with a between-participants design, embedded in a 14-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA).
settingNationwide, Australia (July-August 2023).
participantsParticipants (n = 227; 61.7% men; mean age = 45), 52.0% of whom scored in the moderate-risk or problem range on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), were regular Australian sports and race bettors recruited from online panels who agreed in principle to opt out of receiving direct marketing from all wagering operators with whom they held accounts.
interventionParticipants were stratified by PGSI risk category, age group and gender and then randomly allocated either to an opt-out condition (n = 96), in which they opted out of direct marketing from their wagering operators and provided proof, or to a control condition (n = 131) that continued to receive direct marketing as usual. MEASUREMENTS: Seven EMA surveys were administered every 48 hours over a 14-day period during a high-volume betting season. Outcomes were self-reported number of bets placed, gambling expenditure (in Australian dollars, AUD) and short-term gambling harms in the previous 48 hours, assessed with a 10-item adapted Short Gambling Harm Screen (SGHS).
findingsThe opt-out group placed 23% fewer bets [B = -0.11, 95% confidence interval (CI) = -0.20, -0.03, P = 0.011], spent 39% less money (B = -0.53, 95% CI = -0.84, -0.21, P = 0.001) and reported 67% fewer short-term gambling harms (B = -0.22, 95% CI = -0.36, -0.07, P = 0.004) compared with the controls.
conclusionsOpting out of receiving direct marketing from wagering operators appears to be associated with statistically significantly fewer bets made, amount spent gambling and short-term gambling harms.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.