Responsible Product Design to Mitigate Excessive Gambling: A Scoping Review

Researchers and gambling operators have developed game-based responsible gambling tools and interventions that are intended to mitigate risks for gambling-related harm. We conducted a scoping review of this literature, with a focus on replicability and transparency. We charted 86 studies on characteristics such as study design and sample size. No tools or interventions had unambiguous evidence of efficacy, but some show promise. Pre-registration of research hypotheses, methods, and analytic plans was absent until 2019, reflecting a more recent awareness of open science practices. Published studies also inconsistently reported effect sizes and power analyses. Finally, we observed that the replicability of the responsible product design literature is uncertain but could be low. Specifically, entering each study’s primary result into a z-curve analysis—a tool for quantifying the replicability of a body of literature—revealed some evidence of publication bias based on statistical significance. Greater transparency and precision are paramount to improving the evidence base for responsible product design to mitigate gambling-related harm.