Responsible Gambling Primary Stakeholder Perspectives

"Responsible gambling" refers to a range of strategies, initiatives, and activities introduced by gambling regulators, policymakers, and industry operators to reduce gambling-related harms. There is an absence of agreement about the definition of responsible gambling among these parties, and stakeholders' experiences reflect varied and often conflicting positions about the development, implementation, and maintenance of existing responsible gambling programs. Complicating these issues further, there is little empirical evidence supporting the current crop of responsible gambling activities. Consequently, there is a pressing need to bring together key similarities and differences associated with disparate stakeholder groups.

Responsible Gambling: Primary Stakeholder Perspectives will inform and better ground both current and future debates focused on the topic of responsible gambling and its intended outcomes. Chapters address responsible gambling from the perspective of five groups of complementary stakeholders: scientists/researchers; clinicians; gambling operators; public policy makers/regulators; and recovering gamblers. Contributors address responsible gambling through the lens of the Reno Model, an approach that emphasizes the importance of stakeholders working together and using evidence-based methods to reduce gambling-related harms. Building upon and expanding the Reno Model and addressing conflicts and ethical compromises so that these programs can achieve their intended objectives (reducing the worldwide rate of gambling-related harms), Responsible Gambling will be of value to scientists, clinicians, policy makers, regulators, and industry operators interested in responsible gambling strategies and activities.

Howard J. Shaffer is the Morris E. Chafetz Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of the Behavioral Sciences at Harvard Medical School and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. He served as editor of the Journal of Gambling Studies and of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. He developed the syndrome model of addiction, and his research, writing, and teaching have helped to shape how the healthcare field conceptualizes and treats the full range of addictive behaviors.

Alexander Blaszczynski, Professorial Research Fellow and Director, Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic, University of Sydney, has a long history of treating and studying gambling disorders, and principles and policies related to responsible gambling. He developed a conceptual etiological pathways model of pathological gambling. He is Editor-in-Chief of International Gambling Studies.

Davis Fong is the Director of Institute for the Study of Commercial Gaming as well as a Professor of the Department of Integrated Resort and Tourism Management at the University of Macau. Professor Fong has been responsible for more than 40 gambling and tourism related research projects for Macao SAR Government.

Professor Peter Collins founded and directed the South African National Responsible Gambling Programme (1999-2013). He also was Director for the Centre of the Study of Gambling at Salford University UK (2000-2010). He is the author of the book Gambling and Public Policy and much more on gambling. He has consulted widely for governments and businesses on responsible gambling matters.

Robert Ladouceur is a Professor Emeritus at Laval University in Quebec City. He completed post-doctoral fellow training at Temple University in Philadelphia. His cognitive treatment for pathological gamblers developed at Laval University is widely used around the world. His books written with Stella Lachance, Overcoming Pathological Gambling (therapist guide and workbook) were published in English by Oxford University Press in 2007, and are now also available in Chinese, Japanese, and Finnish.

Foreword

Preface
Phil Satre

1. Responsible Gambling and Its Stakeholders: An Overview
Howard J. Shaffer, Alexander Blaszczynski, Robert Ladouceur, Peter Collins, and Davis Fong

STAKEHOLDERS
ACADEMICS AND SCIENTISTS

2. Should we do away with Responsible Gambling? Perspectives from Research Scientists
Debi A. LaPlante, Heather M. Gray, and Sarah E. Nelson

3. Responsible Gambling: An Academic Perspective
Paul Delfabbro & Daniel King

CLINICIANS AND PUBLIC HEALTH WORKERS

4. Gambling Expansion and Its Association with Disordered Gambling Trends
Ken C. Winters and Nathan Smith

5. Responsible Gambling: Public Health and Social Justice Considerations to Inform Research, Policy, and Practice
Víctor Ortiz and Haner Hernández

6. Responsible Gambling: A Problem Gambler's Perspective
Jodie Nealley and Amanda Winters

7. Responsible Gambling: Consumer and Reformed Problem Gambler Perspectives
Gabriele Byrne

8. Are Responsible Gambling Programs Important? More Importantly, Do They Work?
Arnie Wexler and Sheila Wexler

INDUSTRY OPERATORS

9. Responsible Gambling: From an International Gambling Industry Stakeholder Perspective
Joachim Haeusler

ORGANIZATIONS

10. Responsible Gambling: Organizational Perspective
Christine Reilly

11. Responsible Gambling from a Non-profit Perspective
Jamie Wiebe and Jon Kelly

POLICY MAKERS, REGULATORS, AND LAWYERS

12. The Status of Responsible Gaming: A Massachusetts Perspective
Stephen P. Crosby and Mark Vander Linden

13. A Gambling Lawyer's Perspective on Responsible Gambling
Simon Planzer & Martin Lycka

Afterword
Peter Collins