ABSTRACT
A number of factors have been shown to influence the decision to gamble or to persist in gambling. These ‘not only include the gambler’s biological and psychological constitution and the situational variables, but also the structural characteristics of the gambling activity’ (Griffiths, 1993a). A number of structural characteristics of gambling activity have been identified (Abt et al., 1985; Cornish, 1978; Weinstein and Deitch, 1974), but the impact which complexity of the gambling task has on voluntary participation in a particular gambling activity has received little attention. This chapter aims to address this issue by presenting the results of an empirical study into the impact of complexity in the horse-race betting market on levels of observed participation.
