TWO YEARS ON, BENCHMARKING OF USABILITY AND USER EXPERIENCE: ELECTRONIC TABLE GAMES AGAINST ELECTRONIC GAMING MACHINES AT CASINOS

Electronic gaming machines (EGMs), which emulated mechanical slot machines, were basically the first category of electronic gambling equipment ever at casinos and thus have epitomize such equipment. Admittedly, usability and user experience evaluation of EGMs, as information systems, can often be regarded as a baseline against which analogous evaluation of other less dated electronic gambling equipment, also as information systems, can be benchmarked. Another commonplace category of electronic gambling equipment is electronic table games (ETGs), which are electronic versions of myriad standardized, traditional table games and are considered as a newer generation of equipment than EGMs. Both these EGMs and ETGs play a substantive role in the digital transformation of the casino industry. This article dwells on not only benchmarking gamblers’/users’ perceived usability of and user experience with ETGs against those of and with EGMs but also comparing such benchmarking in late 2022 with that in late 2024 in order to track the evolution of such benchmarking over the two years of casinos’ digital transformation in between. Upon operationalizing the major constructs of the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) as well as the additional construct “trust” as per the mainstream literature, gamblers’/users’ perceived usability of and user experience with ETGs and EGMs were gauged by such constructs as “perceived ease of use,” “perceived usefulness,” “perceived risk,” “attitude,” “social influence,” “innovativeness,” “stress to use a technology,” and “trust.” These constructs of ETGs and EGMs were rated in a questionnaire survey in Macao by n = 693 respondents in late 2022 and n = 179 in late 2024. A paired-samples t-test was conducted to contrast ETGs’ and EGMs’ construct scores of each construct derived from the ratings. reviewed It was found that mitigation or prevention of gamblers’/users’ “perceived risk” was the only construct for which ETGs’ mean construct score outperformed vis-à-vis EGMs’ in both 2022 and 2024 (p < 0.01). Also, for the construct of “attitude” toward ETGs versus EGMs, ETGs’ mean construct score surpassed EGMs’ solely in 2022 (p < 0.05) but not any more in 2024. Additionally, for the construct of mitigation of “stress” to use ETGs versus EGMs, ETGs’ mean construct score underperformed vis-à-vis EGMs’ solely in 2024 (p < 0.05) but not any earlier in 2022. Furthermore, the mitigation or prevention of gamblers’/users’ “perceived risk” was the only construct for which ETGs’ versus EGMs’ construct score in 2024 improved with respect to that in 2022 (p < 0.01). The overall implication was that there were drift and evolution of gamblers’/users’ perceived usability of and user experience with ETGs versus EGMs over the two years between 2022 and 2024. This article advises that further research be undertaken to investigate the underlying reason for the above drift and evolution.