Modeling the non-linear relationship between gambling engagement and years of gambling experience: integrating the exposure and adaptation hypotheses

This article integrates the exposure and adaptation hypotheses concerning gambling engagement by quantitatively modeling, at the community level, the non-linear relationship between gamblers’ engagement and their years of gambling experience and identifies the years of experience corresponding to the maximum/minimum engagement. Gambling engagement indicators were based on the odds of three metrics concerning casino visits, gambling budgets, and gambling affordability being beyond predefined thresholds. Empirical data were collected offline and online (n = 206 and 481) in Macao. Curve fitting of these indicators against gamblers’ years of experience found that the odds of casino visit frequency being less than daily and the gambling budget being greater than both the first and second quartiles followed up-maximum-down quadratic curves over gamblers’ experience. Their maxima were at around 13.3, 22.0, and 22.4 years, respectively. In conclusion, these indicators are non-linearly and bi-directionally related to gamblers’ years of experience as per the aforesaid curves, i.e. the two hypotheses take turns to prevail over gamblers’ lives and are thus integrated temporally. Unprecedentedly, such curves quantitatively model and quantify the timing, magnitude, maximization, and minimization of these indicators’ variations over gamblers’ lives, which matter to governments, the public, therapeutic/rehabilitative professionals, and gambling operators.