KU9: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Online Gambling Sector

As a robustness check, we also use the actual CPR (Actual CPR) based on the two actual reference years 2000 and 2010 that coincide with our sample period without back-filling and interpolation. Kumar (2009) and Kumar et al. (2011) introduce a religious composition, Catholics-to-Protestants ratio (CPR), as a proxy for the local gambling attitudes. They find that in regions with higher CPR, institutional investors tend to hold larger lottery-type stocks, employees tend to receive greater stock option grants, and initial day return following the IPO tend to be higher. Local gambling behavior also affects the risk-taking of mutual funds measured by fund return volatilities (Shu et al. 2012) and greater households’ participation in the stock market (Kim et al. 2021).

Corporate Social Responsibility “A Commitment of all for the development and Sustainability of the Gambling Sector”

• For instance, U.S. consumer trust in Big Pharma remains low, despite the industry’s reported contributions to ending the COVID-19 pandemic.
• This can include sponsoring local events, volunteering employee time, or making financial contributions to organisations that align with the company’s values.
• Casinos are adopting stringent compliance measures to ensure transparency and fairness in their operations.
• This database has been widely used in previous studies (Hrazdil et al. 2022; Jo and Harjoto 2012; Mattingly and Berman 2006; Godfrey et al. 2009).
• Notwithstanding the worth of working through the first section of this chapter the reader is invited to skim it initially and move quickly to the main section of the chapter concerning Research Practice Within the Constructivist Framework.

While Canada may not have a domestic jurisdiction for casino gambling, the excitement and rewards of online gaming are still within reach. By choosing reputable international online casinos, Canadian players can enjoy a safe, secure, and exhilarating gaming experience. Problem gambling is one of the rising issues that have had fingers of accusation pointed at the iGaming industry and gambling operators following the high rate of young adult involvement. Welcome to our exploration of Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethical Practices in the iGaming Industry.

By promoting responsible gambling, companies can help to reduce the prevalence of problem gambling and ensure that their customers are able to enjoy their products in a safe and responsible manner.Another important aspect of CSR in the online gambling sector is ensuring that companies are operating ethically and transparently. This can include being open and honest about their business practices, as well as ensuring that they are compliant with all relevant regulations and laws. This can include supporting local charities and organizations, as well as investing in initiatives that benefit the wider community. By promoting responsible gambling, operating ethically and transparently, and giving back to the community, companies can help to create a safer and more sustainable industry for all stakeholders involved.

CSR in iGaming is expected to continue its evolution, with companies embracing broader and more impactful initiatives. Beyond responsible gaming and philanthropy, the industry is likely to explore new avenues for societal contribution, such as sustainability initiatives and community development projects. The focus will shift from compliance-driven CSR to genuine, purpose-driven engagement with social and environmental causes. Such technology-driven approach will enable companies to offer personalized support to players with potential gambling issues.

Implementing Responsible Gambling Practices

We also find that local gambling attitudes are more positively and more strongly related to institutional CSR than technical CSR. Therefore, we find empirical evidence that firms’ CSR activities are positively related to gambling attitudes. We measure return skewness using CRSP daily returns with 5-year moving average and calculate mean skewness in a given year.

We are a comprehensive casino guide providing expats a reliable source of gambling information in Asia to keep them on the loop even when they are on the go. We start our data compilation from the MSCI ESG Stats database (formerly known as the Kinder, Lyndenberg, and Domini Research and Analytics Inc. or KLD Stats), which contain yearly CSR ratings of large U.S. public companies since 1991. This database has been widely used in previous studies (Hrazdil et al. 2022; Jo and Harjoto 2012; Mattingly and Berman 2006; Godfrey et al. 2009).

Kindbridge is the first-of-its-kind platform in the USA that will work with your gaming organization to create and manage a program that protect players from problematic gambling. Given time, this will usually come around to bite the perpetrator of the thinking as well. The £500,000-penalty issued to the Rank Group for its inappropriate treatment of a VIP with problem gambling issues is a perfect case in point. The customer was visited at their home during a self-exclusion period, which – quite naturally – the UK Gambling Commission deemed inappropriate.

Through these strategic alliances, iGaming companies harness their expertise and resources to address pressing social issues. Whether it’s combating poverty, advancing healthcare access, or advocating for social justice, these partnerships amplify the industry’s capacity to drive meaningful change. Join us on this enlightening journey as we navigate the multifaceted world of CSR and ethics within the iGaming industry. Discover how these principles are not only shaping the business landscape but also leaving a lasting impact on society at large. Together we’ll uncover the delicate balance that companies in this field must strike, ensuring their actions reflect a genuine commitment to the welfare of their customers, communities and the planet. They work with these local communities to point out and note the areas where help is needed.

Below we explore how industry leaders are embracing ethical practices to promote responsible gaming, contribute to social causes, and adopt environmentally sustainable approaches. These endeavors extend beyond mere corporate image-building, fostering enduring trust and loyalty among customers. One of the primary focuses of CSR in the casino sector is promoting responsible gambling. Casinos have introduced various programs and tools designed to help players gamble responsibly.

In Touch Games faced substantial fines from the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) for failings related to social responsibility and anti-money laundering processes. It led to the suspension of their gaming license and financial difficulties for the company. Every casino and betting site in Ontario displays messages on responsible gambling (RG). You’ll find them on-site at land-based casinos and gaming centers and in the small print on their respective websites. These messages are mainly put out there only to satisfy state regulations, but they don’t seem to do much good. Research shows that non-gamblers pay more attention to RG messages than actual gamblers.

We conduct a robustness check using stock returns skewness (Return Skewness) and positively skewed stock returns dummy variable (Positive Skeweness) as our measures of gambling attitudes and our untabulated results are consistent with the results reported in Table4. This paper documents a quantitative study into socially responsible principles and practices adopted in registered clubs in New South Wales Australia to manage one of their social impacts -problem gambling. The survey utilised an adapted version of Aupperle’s (1982) corporate social responsibility instrument to measure the priority given to economic, legal, ethical and discretionary principles in club machine gambling operations.

U.S. states are taking notice of moves made north of the border, where athletes and celebrities can no longer be used to endorse gambling. While it’s probably too late for Big Oil and Big Pharma to paint a favorable picture of themselves to the American public, it’s not too late for gambling operators to do the right thing. Below is a breakdown of why your casino gaming and/or sports betting company must prioritize problem gambling support when redefining its CSR program in 2024 and beyond.

Table 10 shows that stocks with High Idiosyncratic Volatility is positively related to higher CSR Strength, which represents firms’ concerted effort to engage in CSR activities. We also find that the stock price (Stock Price) is more negatively related with CSR Strength and CSR, which also shows some evidence that firms with stocks that exhibit lottery-like characteristic (lower stock price) tend to engage in more CSR activities. We find that High Idiosyncratic Skewness is not significantly related with all our CSR measures. Overall, we find some evidence to support our first hypothesis that firms with lottery-like stocks tend to engage CSR activities.

To check the robustness of our earlier findings, we perform several additional tests in this section. First, to address endogeneity of local gambling attitudes, we employ the two-stage instrumental variable (IV) estimation using the revelation if sexual scandals perpetrated by Catholic clergy (Piazza and Jourdan 2018) as an instrumental variable. Second, to address the causal impact of gambling attitudes on firms’ CSR performance, we implement the flexible conditional difference-in-differences (DID) approach based on firms’ headquarters relocation events. Finally, we conduct multiple robustness tests using alternative measures of CSR activities (i.e., raw CSR scores) as well as of gamble attitudes (i.e., idiosyncratic volatility).

In this article, you will learn how corporate social responsibility can improve the quality of service the gaming industry offers. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is about businesses taking full responsibility for their impact on society. Industries perform differently in these areas, with companies that create or exacerbate problems often receiving poor evaluations.

3. CSR Communication in the Casino Industry

Its growth has roobet been fueled by relentless innovation, leveraging cutting-edge technology to create immersive and easily accessible gaming environments. With the convenience of mobile apps and a plethora of gaming options, the industry has garnered a global following, attracting millions of players worldwide. You can work together to address the negative parts of the gambling industry, like addictions or financial loss, by ensuring that you don’t repeat these mistakes. Then, the industry can continuously and positively proceed with its charitable giving and communal development. The study is guided by the hypothesis that data obtained via FGDs may be influenced by groupthink rather than individual participant’s perspectives.

For instance, risk-seeking firms with gambling attitudes could use CSR as a risk reduction tool given firm’s high-risk profile. Also, there is a possibility that county-level gambling attitudes only reflect the difference in religious denomination and do not properly represent local gambling attitudes. Future research could explore a creative way of constructing firm-level gambling attitude and the risk reduction role of CSR in gambling-prone firms. Second, our findings using lottery-like stock characteristics from Kumar (2009) show only partial evidence to support our argument that firms with lottery-like stocks tend to engage more on CSR activities while our results using return skewness and positive skewness as a measure of lottery-like stock are stronger. Hence, our study demonstrates that CSR activities are related to firms with return skewness and positive skewness than lottery-like stocks. Where i, j, k, s, and t denote firm, industry, county, state, and year, respectively; Adj.

The minister of finance, Marko Primorac, added that 73% of high school students have gambled at least once, with 13% meeting the criteria for a high-level of gambling-related problems. While industry opposes the reforms, the amendments come amid widespread concern about problem gambling in Croatia. The association further warns of consumption shifting toward unregulated channels, resulting in lost tax revenue and market control, while weakening legal operations. If implemented without modification, HUPIS claims Croatia risks closure of over 70% of physical gambling locations and the loss of thousands of jobs. The association also pointed to international examples where similar regulatory interventions allegedly backfired, highlighting Germany, Italy, France and Australia as negative case studies.