Gambling motivations and superstitious beliefs: a cross-cultural study with casino customers

Abstract

The expansion of legalized commercial gaming in Macau has motivated stakeholders to explore opportunities in other Asian countries. However, there is a lack of research focusing on casino customers in these markets. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore gambling superstitious beliefs and motivations of those visiting a casino in South Korea, and how these factors are different across four ethnic groups. The researchers surveyed 323 casino customers in the lounge area on the casino floor, including Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans living abroad. This study found American gamblers could be characterized as more superstitious than Japanese gamblers, while the Chinese and American gamblers exhibited many similarities regarding the pattern of superstitious beliefs that they were most likely to endorse. The findings also suggest the culture and the area around the casino might be more important to Chinese, while novelty to Japanese and winning money to Korean gamblers are seen as most important. This study contributes to gambling literature by examining gamblers' beliefs and motives in a different setting with more diverse populations than those in previous studies. The findings of this study will help casino operators properly develop and adjust strategies to thrive in the Asian marketplace.

The Macroeconomic Determinants of International Casino Travel: Evidence from South Korea’s Top Four Inbound Markets

“…For example, very few studies have investigated the factors influencing the number of casino visitors to foreigner-only casinos in South Korea, despite the fact that Korea's casino industry is becoming one of the most relevant drivers of tourism on the Korean peninsula. Nearly all-sixteen out of seventeen-South Korean casinos are bound by law to admit only foreign gamblers, meaning the determinants of inbound casino tourists is a critical topic for Korea's tourism industry [16]. Nonetheless, the majority of prior studies on Korean gaming have focused on data from Kangwon Land, the country's single open-access (i.e., capable of admitting Korean citizens) casino.…”

“…Korean law divides its casinos into open-access and foreigner-only categories and it is the latter casinos that saw the strongest growth: gamblers utilizing foreigner-only casinos grew from a mere 627,000 in 2001 to 2.96 million in 2014 [15]. Gamblers from China and Japan were foremost among the foreign gamblers that drove success in South Korean casinos [16]. This casino boom coincides with a period in which South Korea has emerged as one of the premier destinations in Asia.…”

Are hotel guests bothered by unlucky floor or room assignments?

“…For the Asian cohort, the paranormal scale is based on Huang and Teng's (2009) Chinese superstitious belief scale. This scale has also been tried and tested in different Chinese contexts (Kim et al, 2016;Lim and Rogers, 2017). The Chinese superstitious belief scale contains six underlying dimensions: Homonyms; Traditional customs; Power of crystal; Horoscope; Feng-shui; and Luck for gambling.…”

Performance drivers in the casino industry of South Korea

“…During the past two decades, as the casino and gaming industries have become mainstream and experienced incredible development (Suh and Kim ), casinos the world over have had to adapt to such rapid growth. At present, the gaming industry is active in the USA, Canada, the Asia Pacific region, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (Kim et al ), and international gaming proceeds are projected to rise due to a particular upsurge in gaming in the Asia Pacific region, especially in Macau and Singapore (Malek and Kim ). Since surpassing the Las Vegas market in 2007, the Asian market, most notably Macau, has taken the lead in the global casino industry (Malek and Kim ).…”

“…By extension, South Korea's casino developments have become highly profitable for the national economy. As a result, South Korea's particularly strong and growing gaming infrastructure has seen increasing interest from researchers seeking to better understand its economic drivers (Kim et al ; Kim and Malek ).…”