Calling big losers with big effects

The phone rings. You answer. On the other end someone is saying “Tell me how you feel about your gambling”. This is how the beginning of a Duty of Care Call might sound. A 6-minute phone call with effects that last a year — most notably among individuals showing the highest level of expenditure — as proven in Jakob Jonsson’s and co authors’ latest study.

From previous research we know that a brief Duty of Care phone call to high expenditure customers was associated with lower gambling over the subsequent year, on a group level.

In this new study the aim was to assess whether subgroups over time benefit differently from the phone calls, using data from Norsk Tipping.

The biggest effects were found with the biggest losers

The study showed that the phone calls were effective for all the three different subgroups of high expenditure customers – a relatively high, medium and low expenditure subgroup. The strongest effect was found among the highest consumers. 

Additional analyses showed that the phone calls were most effective for casino and sport gamblers, male, young and middle aged gamblers. 

– If the results remain consistent in other studies we should look to refine the methods to better reach women and older customers, says Jakob Jonsson,  PhD and licensed psychologist at Sustainable Interaction. 

– From what we’ve seen in this study there are no signs that we’ve yet reached the lower limit for when contacting customers makes sense. The earlier the companies contact the customers, the better from a harm reduction perspective, Jakob continues.  

If you want to know more about this study, feel free to contact Jakob Jonsson at jakob@sustainableinteraction.se