THE USABILITY OF AND USER EXPERIENCE WITH ELECTRONIC GAMING MACHINES AT CASINOS: EVALUATION OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS

This article seeks to not only evaluate gamblers’/users’ perception of electronic gaming machines’ (EGMs’) usability and user experience but also compare such evaluations over the period between the years 2022 and 2024 with a view to tracking how gamblers’/users’ perception of EGMs’ usability and user experience evolved over such a period of casinos’ digital transformation. Such evaluations were based on the backbone constructs of the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) alongside the additional construct “trust” as they were commonly operationalized in the literature. Such constructs as “perceived ease of use” (EOU), “perceived usefulness” (PU), “perceived risk” (RISK), “attitude” (ATTD), “social influence” (SI), “innovativeness” (INNOVA), “stress to use a technology” (STRESS), and “trust” (TR) in respect of EGMs were rated by n = 693 respondents in a questionnaire survey conducted in phase 1 (in late 2022) in Macao and similarly by n = 179 respondents in phase 2 (in late 2024). Paired-samples t-tests were employed to pairwise compare the ratings of these constructs independently in each of the two phases. It was found in phase 2 that, of all these constructs, EOU, INNOVA, STRESS registered the highest population mean construct ratings whilst RISK and TR the lowest. These findings are in partial contrast to the counterparts in phase 1 when RISK’s population mean rating was the lowest and ATTD’s the highest. In essence, these findings reiterate the 2022 advice that risk prevention be prioritized for amelioration, and recommend that gamblers’ trust in EGMs be so prioritized in addition by 2024. Also, the findings, in effect, further advocate keeping up gamblers’/users’ perceived ease of use, self-evaluated innovativeness, and mitigation of perceived stress in using EGMs by 2024 as opposed to maintaining gamblers’/users’ attitude toward EGMs back in 2022. As EGMs emulate mechanical slot machines and typify electronic gambling equipment at casinos, such findings epitomize one major aspect of the outcomes of digital transformation at casinos, which are generally regarded as a tendentious leisure industry and thus seldom studied in the information systems literature.