Impacts of Fear Appeal Type and Source Similarity in Horse-Racing Addiction Prevention Messages on Anticipated Regret and Discontinuance Intent between Horse-Racing Participant Types

PURPOSE This study aimed to verify the differences in anticipated regret and gambling discontinuance intent based on the fear appeal type and source similarity in different types of horse-racing gamblers. METHODS Using convenience sampling, 172 responses were collected from horse-racing participants who bought horse-racing tickets within the last 6 months. After eliminating 30 insincere responses, descriptive, correlation, reliability, and two-way multivariate covariance analyses were conducted using SPSS Ver. 26.0. RESULTS Anticipated regret and discontinuance intent were higher under fear appeal using social compared with financial risk. Compared to recreational gamblers, problem gamblers had higher anticipated regret and discontinuance intent under fear appeal using social compared with financial risk. There were no differential impacts of source similarity on anticipated regret and discontinuance intent in both types of gambler. CONCLUSIONS Practitioners in charge of conducting messaging campaign to prevent addiction to horse-racing gambling may cause problem gamblers to expect regret and quit gambling by delivering preventive messages with relatively unfamiliar risks such as social risks, rather than familiar risks such as financial ones.