Rutgers-Eagleton Poll Bodes Badly For New Jersey Expansion Plan

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Thursday, September 22nd, 2016 | Written by Adam Brown

The Rutgers Center for Gambling Studies has shared the findings of a study on gambling addiction inside New Jersey that shines some light on the extent of the problem. Funded by taxpayers’ money, the purpose of the study was to examine social problems that arise due to Internet gambling, so that the Garden State can then take steps to address these issues, and encourage responsible gambling.

In the meantime, a Rutgers-Eagleton Poll recently found that the number of New Jersey residents in favor of a casino expansion in the state has fallen to just 40 percent, compared to 50 percent for people who would prefer to keep casinos restricted to where they already are in Atlantic City. Suffice to say, the results bode badly for Chris Christie’s plan to build two new casinos in north Jersey.

Takeaways from Rutgers Study:

– The study found that 4.5 percent of people who only visit casinos to gamble can be classified as “problem gamblers.” Roughly 14 percent of those who only gamble online qualify for the title, while nearly 37 percent of those who visit casinos and play online can be considered problem gamblers. It’s important to note that you cannot reach a conclusion about causation with this fact alone. Do the people gamble online because they got addicted playing at a casino or was it the other way around? It’s hard to know.

– Rutgers concluded that 14.23 percent of players who play poker online in New Jersey have made use of responsible gaming programs like deposit limits, loss limits, time limits, self-exclusion and cool-off periods.

– People in the 25 to 34 age group were most likely to use responsible gaming features with 31.2 percent reporting that they do. The 35 to 44 years age bracket had the second highest rate of use with 23.2 percent opting in for their use.

– Women were far more likely to use the responsible gaming features than men. Although only 23 percent of the people who gamble online are women, the ladies account for 60 percent of the total use of responsible gaming features.

– The most popular responsible gaming feature is self-exclusion. That’s surprising considering that if you self exclude from one site in New Jersey, you cannot play online at all in the state for one full year. It seems that it’s the need to quit gambling completely that finally motivates people to use the features.

– About 17 percent of people who do self exclude try other responsible gaming features before they take the step to bar themselves from playing. This could indicate that for most people self exclusion was the first and only step taken to control gambling habits.

– The trend in New Jersey has shifted. In 2014, deposit limits were the most common responsible gaming feature to be utilized. For 2015, they were one-third as popular as self exclusions. When you consider this point with the point above, it seems that perhaps in 2014 players first tried to control their possible gambling problems by limiting how much they could deposit and found this was not effective enough after one year of play, resulting in complete self exclusion.

– Rutgers recommends that operators go to greater lengths to promote their responsible gaming features, suggesting that players be educated about them when they register for accounts.

Takeaways from Rutgers-Eagleton Poll:

In the meantime, the results of a recently conducted Rutgers-Eagleton Poll reveals that support for a casino expansion in New Jersey has fallen to just 40 per cent versus 50 per cent for those against. In addition, only 35% of the people polled viewed positively the building of two new casinos in North Jersey, with 58% voicing strong opposition to the location. Commenting on the poll results, Ashley Koning, Interim Director of the Eagleton Center, said:

“Eagleton has been polling on permitting gambling in other parts of the state since 1979, and New Jerseyans across a number of demographics have never warmed to the idea. If this pattern continues, there is little hope for the ballot amendment passing.”

In the past, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has firmly been in favor of a casino expansion, but his popularity has fallen in recent months, as has the support for the issue. According to his proposal, the new casinos must be located at least 72 miles from Atlantic City, which has raised the hackles of the borough of Oceanport which lies 70 miles from the seaside gambling resort. Keen to protect the interest of its Monmouth Park Racetrack, Oceanport Mayor Jay Coffey has been encouraging voters to vote no to any casino expansion come the November 8th referendum, stating:

“Once again, Trenton politicians have put special interests over people by pushing for casino expansion into North Jersey. As currently proposed, this expansion would only benefit a small group of well-connected, New York developers, instead of the citizens of New Jersey.”