Impact of cash-out availability in a naturalistic betting task: A randomized experimental study

Background and Aims: People place larger bets on outcomes of risky events when they can settle their bet earlier – i.e., they are allowed to cash-out before the bet concludes. Using a naturalistic gambling task, the present study aims to determine how the opportunity to cash-out impacts the decision to bet and to assess the underlying association between cash-out availability and risk of gambling harm.Design and setting: We conducted an incentivised between-participants online experiment, where participants could place fixed-odds bets on the outcomes of pre-recorded horse races via an interface resembling a commercial bookmaker’s website. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions in which the cash-out was either available or not available to them and were given the option to gamble an endowment that they had previously earned in a real-effort task.Cases: 377 participants with experience in online sports betting were recruited from online research participation platform Prolific. Measurements: The decision to engage with the gambling task was recorded at 3 points during the experimental session. Stake sizes and implied win probabilities of placed bets were recorded. Risk of gambling harms was measured by administering the PGSI.Results: People in the cash-out-available group were more likely to choose the gambling task over a distractor (non-gambling) game (χ²(1, N=377)=4.59, p=0.032) and made larger bets when wagering than those in the no-cash-out group (W=19761.5, p=0.021). There was no effect of the manipulation on the average odds of bets placed (W=10635.5, p=0.67). No significant interactions with PGSI were observed for either stake size (β=-0.02, SE=0.02, p=0.15) nor the implied win probability of placed bets (β<0.01, SE<0.01, p=0.44). Participants in the cash-out-available group engaged with the gambling task for longer than participants in the no-cash-out group (β=0.65, SE=0.23, p=0.0047). Conclusions: The provision of cash-out options in horse race betting results in significant changes in betting behaviour. These behaviours can lead to gambling harms, pointing towards the potential risks of the cash-out option.