Effects of winning and losing streaks on within-session chasing in online gambling: A replication and extension study

Abstract

Background and aims: Loss-chasing (persisting and/or intensifying gambling to recoup previous losses) is a key clinical symptom of gambling disorder. A recent large-scale study assessed loss-chasing within sessions following immediate losses and wins in an online commercial gamble and found that gamblers stopped playing and decreased stake amount after losses than wins but played more quickly following losses than wins (Chen et al., 2022). However, how loss-chasing may change across outcome streaks has remained unclear. The current study aimed to replicate Chen et al. (2022) and extend it to outcome streaks. Methods. A large-scale dataset of 4308 gamblers (~71 million rounds) from the same gamble was analyzed to assess three facets of within-session chasing following winning and losing streaks, namely persistence, changes in stake size and speed of play. Results: We replicated the main findings from Chen et al. Extending the previous findings, gamblers significantly decreased persistence and stake amount but did not change speed of play as the losing streak increased. Contrarily, no clear pattern was observed following winning streaks. Moreover, gambler’s gambling involvement level (high vs. low) did not impact within-session chasing. Discussion and conclusion: The current results can be most parsimoniously explained by the wealth effect, in which reduced gambling funds following consecutive losses constrained gamblers’ tendency to continue and increase stake sizes, but not their speed of play. This finding has implications for both research into the psychological mechanisms of chasing, and safer gambling initiatives that aim to identify markers of chasing in real gambling.