gambling in alberta - Research Services - University of Lethbridge

(e.g., U.S., Canada, where it is about 2 – 4%) (Wood & Williams, 2009). In general, legal
sanctioning of a product tends to increase availability and consumption of that product. 55
In summary, it is very unlikely that domestic casinos have stemmed the flow of gambling
revenue leaving Alberta, and may have inadvertently increased it. However, it is important to
contextualize the magnitude of this loss. Table 23 also illustrates that, in terms of proportion of
Alberta GDP, these losses represent relatively small amounts (likely less than 0.2% of GDP
(using TSRC data), either before or after casino introduction).
Geographic Revenue Patterns within Alberta
There are several ways of addressing this question. Two ways are reported expenditures in the
population surveys, and actual revenue from annual reports.
Reported Expenditures
Unfortunately, participant residency in the population surveys was either not asked or analyzed
in most of these surveys. However, it was asked in 2001, 2008, and 2009, and is reported
below in Table 25. Mean and median expenditure are reported for each year. The medians are
a more reliable indicator of typical expenditure, as outliers have an inordinate effect on the
means. In general, these surveys tended to find higher per adult expenditure levels in northern
Alberta compared to southern Alberta, with perhaps the two major cities having intermediate
values.
Table 25: Reported Per Adult Net Monthly Expenditure on Government Sanctioned
or Sponsored Gambling as a Function of Region.
2001 2001 2008 2008 2009 2009
mean median mean median mean median
Northern Alberta $211 $22 $79 $15 +$12 $20
Edmonton $95 $15 $126 $15 +$16 $10
Calgary $90 $15 $21 $10 $39 $15
Southern Alberta $111 $14 $36 $12 $79 $10
For the 2008 and 2009 surveys, Edmonton comprised the Edmonton Census Division (#11);
‘Calgary’ comprised the Calgary Census Division (#6), Southern Alberta comprised Census
Divisions 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,15, Northern Alberta comprised Census Divisions 10,12,13,14,16,17,18,19.
See Appendix D for details.
The expenditure questions were worded slightly differently between surveys. In 2001 the
question asked “In the past 12 month, how much money, not including winnings, did you spend
on _________ in a typical month”. Furthermore, ‘wins’ were not accepted as an answer. In 2008
and 2009 the question was “Roughly how much money do you spend on ________ in a typical
month? Spend means how much you are ahead (+$) or behind (-$), or your net win or loss in an
average month in the past 12 months.”
55 The most problematic drugs in Western society always have always been the legally sanctioned ones (i.e.,
tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs), rather than the illegal ones.
116