Socioeconomic Impacts Flashcards
What is the current global gambling revenue?
Almost 450 billion dollars.
What are the largest contributors to global gambling revenue? (types of gambling)
Lotteries–>Casinos–>Gaming Machines–>betting–>US Indian Gaming–>other
What is the current trend for net revenue from gambling in Canada recently?
Net revenue from government-run gambling has leveled off recently
What are the 3 largest individual gambling markets?
- Macau
- Las Vegas
- Singapore
who are the 3 largest contributers to global gambling revenue?
1 - US (50%)
2 - Asia Pacific (30%)
3 - EMEA
what is the problem with most prior research on socioeconomic gambling impacts?
its either inconsistent, inadequate, biased, or all three
Why does gambling research end up corrupted?
funders for this type of research often have a vested interest in a certain outcome.
Where should socioeconomic research funding come from?
- independent agencies without a vested interest in the outcome
What are some economic indices to gambling?
- government revenue
- public services
- regulatory costs
- infrastructure value
- infrastructure costs
- business starts and failures
- business revenue
- personal income
- property values
What are some social indices linked to gambling?
- problem gambling
- crime
- employment
- socioeconomic inequality
- leisure activity
- public attitudes
- quality of life
- social capital
- values
What metric is best used to capture economic changes from gambling? what metric is best for social changes?
- MONEY for ECONOMIC
- %CHANGES in divorce, crime, suicide, etc. for SOCIAL
What is the problem with traditional cost-benefit analysis for gambling? or anything for that matter?
- It is difficult to apply $$$ to Social Changes.
- requires everything to be a cost or benefit, some things are just changes
what is the best method for measuring socioeconomic changes from gambling?
- a profile of impacts with several different indices
- this approach makes the overall impact depend on the relative importance of each index
What 3 ways can gambling represent a true economic benefit to an economy?
- influx of money/assets from outside jurisdiction
- increases value of existing assets
- increases utilization of existing capital
What is the problem with pre-post studies on gambling? how do we avoid this?
- they ignore the multitude of economic and social forces at work that are not because of gambling
- use a economically, socially, and demographically similar community as a control that did not receive a new gambling venue.
What are some reliable economic impacts from the introduction of new gambling?
- increase in government revenue
- increase in public services
- increase in regulatory costs (usually much less than the revenue that government gains from gambling)
- construction of new gambling venues reliably adds to physical assets and wealth of a community
- increase in infrastructure costs * usually offset by revenue and increased infrastructure value
- increase in business revenue, new starts, and employment * local patronage has negative impacts on a wide range of other businesses
What are some reliable social impacts from increased gambling?
- increase in PG for the first few years
- decrease in illegal gambling
- no real impact on crime
- lower income people consistently spend proportionally more of their income on gambling.
- offers entertainment value and additional leisure option to general populace
- positive impacts for North American Aboriginal communities with successful casinos.
What are government and business leaders attitudes towards gambling generally like? What about the general populace?
- government and business leaders have positive attitudes about gambling impacts
- general populace tends to have negative opinions about gambling impacts
- males, young people, and heavy gamblers have more positive opinions
What are 9 variables that mediate gambling impacts?
- size of change in gambling availablity
- type of gambling introduced
- length of time gambling has already been available
- local vs out-of-region patrons
- strength of policies in place to mitigate negative effects
- baseline levels of community impoverishment
- length of time impacts are examined
- how gambling revenue is distributed
What is the impact of gambling on any given jurisdiction?
- ranges from small to large
- depends on jurisdiction
- for the most part, MIXED
- **- positive economic impacts offset by a range of mild to moderate negative social impacts.
SOCIOECONOMIC IMPACTS OF GAMBLING
Socioeconomic research funding needs to come from independent agencies without a vested interest in the outcome.
A wide net must be cast to capture and report all potential economic and social variables that may be impacted.
Need to use a metric that best captures the impact. Money is most appropriate for most economic changes, as well as social changes with clear monetary costs (e.g., police time, treatment cost)
However, other social impacts will be best captured and described in more straightforward ways (e.g., % change in divorces, suicides, crime, etc.).
Monetary changes with clear ‘costs’ and ‘gains’ can be combined into an aggregate measure (classical CBA). Other changes (e.g., % increase in crime; % increase in suicides) are best reported as they are and NOT combined.
End result is a PROFILE OF IMPACTS with several different indices
Socioeconomic analyses should examine the geographic ‘magnitude’ of the impact and to estimate both community-specific costs/benefits, and macro, regional impacts. Patronage origin provides some guidance about how large a geographic range to study.
Need to document prior gambling opportunities and socioeconomic effects for several years before the opening of the new gambling venue as well as for several years after.
Use both pre-post and control community comparisons.
The best impact studies are ones that over sample subpopulations most at risk for being impacted so that these subpopulation impacts can also be examined.
Need to qualify results as being specific to the type of gambling
Results need to be qualified as being specific to the jurisdiction studied.
Results need to be qualified as being specific to the time period studied.
Results need to speak both to changes from baseline and changes relative to what the current situation would likely be without gambling.
