The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166728   Message #4013702
Posted By: GUEST,mmarlow
15-Oct-19 - 01:02 AM
Thread Name: Want lottery education/resistance songs
Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
> Or that they get more fun from the chance of winning than pain from losing.
> The government endorses gambling by selling lottery tickets, as do churches and charities with raffles.

Not clear that fun is a major factor in buying lottery tickets among those who spend most of the money.
Lottery spending does not behave like entertainment spending. (In times of economic adversity entertainment spending goes down, but not lottery spending.)
The money that people spend on lotteries comes from many areas of their budgets (Housing, food, etc.), not just from entertainment.

Heavy players are more likely look at lottery as an investment. (A way to upward social mobility, especially since such mobility is now more limited in the USA than it used to be, or than it is in other countries.)

Not sure that raffles are comparable.
Do you get same pattern of a small portion of people compulsively buying many tickets? I suspect that raffles might be more readily understood as a donation to a worthy cause, with the possibility of some prize not being the primary motivation. (That is just a guess, I haven't researched that aspect.)

The above studies are of lotteries in the USA, many other countries have had lotteries for much longer, but I haven't researched to see if they have similar patterns.