Award Date

5-1-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

William F. Harrah College of Hospitality

First Committee Member

Brett Abarbanel

Second Committee Member

Shane Kraus

Third Committee Member

Ashok Singh

Fourth Committee Member

Mehmet Erdem

Fifth Committee Member

Gloria Wong-Padoongpatt

Number of Pages

207

Abstract

The growing popularity of social media platforms has transformed how gambling content reaches audiences, with gambling vlogs now attracting millions of viewers outside traditional marketing channels. Despite their reach and potential influence, these user-generated videos remain understudied in gambling research. This study sought to analyze slot machine vlogs by examining their portrayal of gambling experiences, assessing viewer engagement patterns, and identifying the video features associated with higher engagement metrics. Using a comprehensive mixed-methods approach, I analyzed 170 popular YouTube slot machine vlogs and 43,837 viewer comments through advanced analytical techniques. Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling identified four themes in gambling portrayal, with betting strategies and game mechanics dominating the narratives. A targeted term detection approach found that responsible gambling (RG) messaging appeared in only 9.41% of videos, while binary logistic regression analyses indicated that these RG-inclusive videos were associated with higher engagement metrics. Viewer comment analysis using SentiStrength showed predominantly neutral-to-positive sentiment, and comment topic modeling uncovered five distinct engagement themes ranging from technical discussions to community building. The study contributes to gambling literature through its comprehensive analysis of an influential yet previously underexamined medium while developing methodological frameworks applicable to video content analysis in broader hospitality research. The findings offer actionable implications across the gambling ecosystem: content creators gain strategies for optimizing audience engagement, gambling operators receive guidance on partnership selection, and platforms obtain recommendations for developing policies that balance user engagement with RG practices.

Keywords

Gambling; Gambling Vlogs; Responsible Gambling

Disciplines

Hospitality Administration and Management | Leisure Studies | Tourism and Travel

File Format

pdf

Run Time

1467 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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Available for download on Friday, May 15, 2026


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