Public Gaming Magazine Sept/Oct 2021

47 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 MAKING CHOICES The Players Project event recreated another famous behavioral science experiment – this time featuring cof- fee – to give the audience a sense of what’s happening in consumer’s minds when they make the types of choices that lottery play- ers make in buying a ticket. “Imagine you’re standing in your local cof- fee shop and choosing your morning shot of caffeine,” said moderator Charles Cohen, instructing participants to indicate in the live poll which size coffee they would buy: small, medium, or large. “We make thousands of choices on a day-to-day basis, and we often suffer from choice-overload,” said Service. “As a result, we end up using simple rules of thumb we can apply to support our decision-making. When we’re choosing any kind of consum- er-based product, such as coffee or lottery, the decision to purchase is often based on the relative merits of a choice, compared to the other available options.” In the original experiment, the small cup seemed too small for many respondents, the large one seemed too large, and the middle one seemed like just the right amount of coffee. In behavioral sciences this is known as The Goldilocks Effect. Research shows that even when the coffee cups are sized-up to hold larger amounts, respondents still tend to go for the medium-sized choice. The Players Project live poll showed that The Goldilocks Ef- fect is alive is well. For lotteries and retailers, the ex- periment could inform efforts to help consumers make an engaging choice, a responsible choice, a choice that’s right for them. With consumers making thousands of deci- sions every day, “We could make it easier for people to take those decisions,” said Service. “It comes down to curation – how you present the choices. If people are going in for the first time [to buy a lottery ticket], what are they comparing that deci- sion to? What is it relative to?” he asked. “And if they’re already engaged, then it’s more a question of the relative nature of their decision within an existing category.” The central point, which is fundamental to life in lots of different areas, is that we don’t usually make decisions based on objective merits, but on relative position- ing of the choices. How can you make it easier for people to choose between games? Behavioral science has some insights that can be valuable and useful to predict and test new ways of offering games, and also to under- stand the ways players react when they’re faced with a different set of choices. How does relative pricing between games impact selection? Across the broader category of consumer packaged goods, relative pricing matters. Given the routinized behavior that people seem to demonstrate when they play lottery, there are opportunities to put value in front of players in a way that may not necessarily have been considered before. Not only in how it’s printed on the ticket itself, but how you place the ticket relative to other choices. MENTAL ACCOUNTING The third experiment presented is one that helped its creators earn a Nobel Prize: “You receive a small tax refund you weren’t expecting. What do you want to do with the money? Have fun, save for a rainy day, or donate it to a charity?” Service explained that the original research demonstrates a phenomenon known as Mental Accounting, and the experiment itself derived from the observation that many standard economic models assume “a dollar is a dollar is a dollar.” But it turns out that’s not how humans make decisions. We mentally account for each of those dollars in various buckets, and if we deplete our bud- get for one category, it doesn’t necessarily make an impact on the rest of our spending decisions. “It also accounts for why people treat money differently depending on its source,” he said. For example, in the experiment, “Even