Near Misses in Sports Betting

This project is designed to investigate different types of outcomes in sports betting, with a primary focus on near-miss (e.g., winning 3 out of 4 games on a single ticket) and double near-miss (e.g., winning 3 out of 4 games while also narrowly missing the last game) outcomes. Since previous research has demonstrated negative effects associated with near-miss outcomes in other gambling forms, it is important to investigate near-miss outcomes in this context. Currently there exists no research that sheds light on the effects of near-miss outcomes in a sports betting domain. In order to investigate near-misses in sports betting, participants will experience one of four outcomes in a hypothetical sports betting task (i.e., loss, win, near-miss, double near-miss) and then rate their subjective experience on a number of dimensions.