Motivating Workouts

Self-exclusion noted a gym where non-attendance at scheduled workouts results in fines. The fine system is presumably motivated by the gym's capacity constraints: popular classes are over-subscribed, so reservations are required. The fines dissuade people from making, but then not honoring, their reservations. The system is similar to cancellation fees for hotels or airlines or upscale restaurants.

Via the Freakonomics blog, we learn of a Boston-area gym-pricing option that features higher fees for missed workouts. The variant of the fee schedule that involves enhanced payments for missing a daily workout has much in common with the fines imposed by the Chicago gym. Nevertheless, the motivations behind the two plans seem to be quite different: one is about managing a capacity constraint, and the other is about bolstering workout incentives. (And as the Boston plan is one that is self-selected among other fee arrangements, perhaps there is a systematic difference in the "types" of exercisers in the two locales.) Does the motivation behind the pricing scheme matter, or will the two similar plans produce similar results in terms of exercise behavior?

Foreigners Can Self-Exclude in Singapore

In the lead-up to the opening of two resort casinos, Singapore established a self-exclusion program. At first, self-exclusion was made available only to Singapore citizens and permanent residents. In recent months, however, the self-exclusion option has been extended to foreigners living in Singapore who hold temporary work permits. To get out the word, the institution that manages the self-exclusion program sent out 95,000 letters to employers, letting them know that their foreign workers now have access to casino self-exclusion.The employers themselves will not be able to initiate the casino exclusion of their employees. (Other types of involuntary exclusions are allowed in Singapore, including bans initiated at the behest of family members of a gambler.) Employers can facilitate a voluntary self-exclusion, however -- and it might be hard for a foreign worker to reject the proffered aid.

Missouri's Introduction of Self-Exclusion

In the United States, the first government-sponsored self-exclusion program was instituted by the state of Missouri in 1996. One of the people involved with the creation of the Missouri program has written a brief essay describing the initiation of self-exclusion; the essay, "The Emergence of Self-Exclusion Programs," appears on pages 3 to 6 of a 2010 publication (54-page pdf here) from the National Center for Responsible Gaming. (The entire volume, brought to my attention by the Pennsylvania press release linked in the previous post, is devoted to self-exclusion; more commentary on the volume, I suspect, will e-materialize on this blog in the future.) Missouri's voluntary self-exclusion program emanated from publicity concerning its involuntary program. Like many jurisdictions, Missouri bars some individuals (often those with gambling-related offenses in their background) from entering casinos. When a list of such excluded individuals made the news in 1995, a person suffering with his inability to control his gambling asked if he similarly could be banned. From such humble beginnings has grown a program that now includes more than 15,000 people who have volunteered for a lifetime ban on patronizing Missouri's casinos.

2,000 Applicants for Pennsylvania Self-Exclusion

Legal casinos came to Pennsylvania in late 2006, accompanied by a system of self-exclusion that applies to all gambling locales in the state. Within six months, more than 50 people had signed up for exclusion. Since that time, self-exclusion has been something of a growth industry in Pennsylvania: in January, 2011, the state announced that 2,000 erstwhile gamblers had made use of its self-exclusion service -- and more than one-quarter of these had chosen a lifetime ban over the one-year and five-year options, though the one-year ban was the majority choice. The one-year and five-year exclusions do not simply expire; rather, the excluded gambler has to request that the self-imposed ban be lifted after the exclusion period has elapsed.

Does Casino Self-Exclusion Work? (V)

European casinos generally require that patrons provide identification upon entering, and this measure aids enforcement of exclusion orders. (The news is filled with a continuing series of reports of excluded gamblers in other jurisdictions managing to evade, at least for a time, their exclusion orders.) A new article by Tobias Hayer and Gerhard Meyer uses a series of questionnaires to learn about the effectiveness of casino self-exclusion programs in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The results comport well with the findings from prior studies undertaken at other locales: gamblers who choose to self-exclude typically experience significant declines in gambling-related problems, and they tend to view the self-exclusion quite positively. These general findings are complemented by a slew of interesting details, including the importance of other gamblers, family members, and friends in informing people about the existence of self-exclusion programs. Only a relatively small number of gamblers learn of self-exclusion through information displays inside the casinos, suggesting that there is room for improved publicity measures. Casino staff, in these European locations, are nearly twice as likely as passive information displays to be a source of knowledge of the self-exclusion option.

The ID controls in European casinos, and the accompanying increase in the enforceability of an exclusion order, might make self-exclusion more popular as a preventative measure in Europe than elsewhere. About one-quarter of the participants in the study would not be classified as problem or pathological gamblers, by the usual metrics, at the time they chose to exclude.

Hayer and Meyer also indicate that my longstanding belief that formal casino self-exclusion programs originated in Canada in 1989 is terribly misguided. They report that self-exclusion programs existed decades earlier in both Germany and Austria. I will have to do some revising!


Previous (misguided?) posts in this series:

Does Casino Self-Exclusion Work? (IV)

Does Casino Self-Exclusion Work? (III)

Does Casino Self-Exclusion Work? (II)

Does Casino Self-Exclusion Work? (I)

eCOGRA's Safe and Fair Seal Requires Exclusion Options

Internet gambling seems to combine two area of human activity that display more than their share of less-than-trustworthy behavior. Someone interested in placing a bet online could be scared off over the uncertainty surrounding the integrity of the transaction offered by an internet betting shop or casino.

The internet gambling industry recognized their credibility problem at an early stage. One response that they adopted is a form of self-regulation. This response involves a sort of Good Housekeeping seal of approval, and one non-profit, independent (of the online betting shops) organization that awards the e-gambling seals is eCOGRA. To qualify for the right to display a "Safe and Fair" seal, internet gambling providers must meet a host of requirements concerning player protection, fair gaming, and responsible conduct. The detailed guidelines can be found here (49-page pdf). More than 100 e-casinos, internet poker rooms, and e-betting shops, including many of the best-known ones, currently are authorized to display the Safe and Fair seal.

Among the requirements for a Safe and Fair seal is the provision and effective communication of self-exclusion measures. A 24-hour cooling-off option must be available to players, and a six-month or longer exclusion also must be on offer. Third parties can request that a gambler be excluded -- as in Singapore's land-based casinos -- but those requests need not be honored. The guidelines also require, if I understand things correctly, that the gambling sites allow players to establish deposit limits, and to decrease those limits. Requests to increase a deposit limit that previously had been decreased cannot be honored for at least 24 hours. So both self-exclusion and self-limiting features are built into Safe and Fair e-gambling sites. Nevertheless, it does not appear to be the case that a single exclusion request will apply to multiple websites. (A system mentioned earlier had the feature of allowing a single exclusion to be implemented at multiple sites.) An e-gambler hoping to cut off access to his or her vice of choice might have a hard time maintaining enough stamina to self-exclude from dozens of e-casinos, of course.

Choosing to be Fined for Failure to Quit Smoking

Casino-style self-exclusion presents a physical barrier to further betting, and also lowers the reward to gambling, through the threat of confiscation of winnings (and embarrassment at being caught in violation of the exclusion order). Now-standard(?) commitment contracts implement the reward diminution element, but not the physical unavailability, when it comes to refraining from the undesired behavior.

A recent article by Gine', Karlan, and Zinman (working paper version here) examined a field trial in the Philippines of commitment contracts aimed at smoking cessation. Smokers were offered a chance to conveniently make weekly deposits to an illiquid bank account. (The idea was that they would deposit about the amount they would otherwise spend on cigarettes.) After six months, the depositors who took up this option would be tested to see if they had quit smoking. If they had quit, they would have access to their funds; if not, they would lose the money. The vast majority of smokers who were offered the savings account option refused to take part. Most of those who did take up the commitment contract failed to quit smoking. Nevertheless, quit rates were higher for those offered the savings account option than for those in the control group, and the difference persisted six months later.