Weather Conditions and Lottery Play [working paper]

The working paper "Why Consumers Buy Lottery Tickets When the Sun Goes Down on Them: The Depleting Nature of Weather-Induced Bad Moods" (2006, September) examines the link between negative mood and lottery play.

A longitudinal study on the extent of lottery play in Belgium shows that lottery expenditures are indeed higher after reduced exposure to sunshine, even after controlling for people’s inertia, time-varying characteristics of the game, and deterministic seasonal components. The results of a first laboratory study are consistent with these findings, and establish a link between lottery play and negative mood. Subsequent experiments provide evidence that depletion due to active mood regulation attempts, rather than mood repair, is the underlying process for the link between bad weather and lottery play.