Maria J. Kaizeler, Master, Finance, Piaget Institute, ISEIT and SOCIUS - Research Centre in Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Organizations, Rua Miguel Lúpi, n.º 20, Lisboa, 1249-078, Portugal and Horácio C. Faustino, Ph.D, Economics, ISEG, Technical University of Lisbon and SOCIUS- Research Centre in Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Organizations, Rua Miguel Lúpi, 20, Lisboa, 1249-078, Portugal.
Varieties of lottery games are played regularly in more than half of the world’s countries. When considering the probability of winning a lottery jackpot, which in the case of the Euromillions is approximately 76 million to one, or 0.0000013%, we have a sense of the illogicality in buying a lottery ticket in the hope of receiving the big prize. This begs the question, why do people buy lottery products? We examine the lottery sales of 80 countries in five continents in order to make an analysis of the socio-economic and demographic features that help to explain gambling consumption around the world. With a multivariate linear regression analysis, this study uses macroeconomic data and qualitative variables to explain the variation of a country’s per-capita lottery sales. Some very interesting results were obtained. For example, the higher a country’s percentage of males and Christians, the higher are the lottery sales and fewer lottery products are purchased in countries with higher levels of education. These results are of interest because they suggest a link between certain socio-economic and demographic characteristics and consumer behavior and may give a boost to the use of these characteristics in consumer research.