Happy-go-lucky. Positive emotions boost demand for lotto.

The objective of this work was to investigate whether situational emotions can influence consumers’ decision to purchase lottery tickets. We conducted a field experiment in which positive or negative emotions were induced immediately prior to such a decision in 685 subjects unaware of their participation in a study. Two methods of induction—gambling related and gambling unrelated—were used to verify the robustness of the results. We found that subjects in whom positive emotions were induced, in both gambling and non-gambling contexts, bought lottery tickets significantly more often than subjects with negative emotions or those in the control group.