Embedded disruption: Facilitating responsible gambling with persuasive systems design

Principles of Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) have been implemented in various applications designed to promote attitude or behaviour change. In order to facilitate responsible gambling, current practices call for gamblers to preset monetary limits and adhere to them. In this study, PSD principles were combined with a "just-in-time" embedded disruption in order to facilitate adherence to preset monetary limits in online gambling. A user-centred design process, including focus groups and a heuristic evaluation, was employed to define needs and requirements, and evaluate the tool. A lab study with a virtual casino showed that the embedded disruption tool was associated with more players quitting when they reached their preset monetary limit compared with the current monetary limit tool, demonstrating the principle of embedded disruption is effective.

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