An operant analysis of gaming machine play

The notion of structural effects in gaming machine play is increasingly gaining importance in the gambling literature. The development of gaming machines in Australia has seen a large number of machine characteristics become an inherent part of poker machine play. However, there is an absence of studies examining their effect. Two studies were undertaken examining the relationship between the structural characteristics of poker machines and player expenditure patterns. The first study examined aggregated player data from over 1000 poker machines. The results suggest that both measures of expenditure utilised, stake size and net profit, are related to structural characteristics. This finding provided a foundation for the theoretical discussion of individual player behaviour encompassing both learning and cognitive paradigms. The second study examined the expenditure patterns of 533 individual players in an ecologically valid setting. The results indicate that player stake size is related to certain structural characteristics but player net loss is not. These results failed to support the predictions of operant conditioning. A model of structural effects is proposed and the theoretical implications for future studies of gaming behaviour are discusse