Number 19: Another Victim of the COVID‐19 Pandemic?

Patrick Roger, D’Hondt, Catherine, Daria Plotkina and Arvid Hoffmann
Additional contact information
D’Hondt, Catherine: Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/LFIN, Belgium

No 2022007, LIDAM Discussion Papers LFIN from Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain Finance (LFIN)

Abstract: Conscious selection is the mental process by which lottery players select numbers nonran- domly. In this paper, we show that the number 19, which has been heard, read, seen, and googled countless times since March 2020, has become significantly less popular among Belgian lottery players after the World Health Organization named the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 “COVID-19”. We argue that the reduced popularity of the number 19 is due to its negative association with the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study tri- angulates evidence from field data from the Belgian National Lottery and survey data from a nationally representative sample of 500 Belgian individuals. The field data indicate that the number 19 has been played significantly less frequently since March 2020. However, a potential limitation of the field data is that an unknown proportion of players selects num- bers randomly through the “Quick Pick” computer system. The survey data do not suf- fer from this limitation and reinforce our previous findings by showing that priming an increase in the salience of COVID-19 prior to the players’ selection of lottery numbers reduces their preference for the number 19. The effect of priming is concentrated amongst those with high superstitious beliefs, further supporting our explanation for the reduced popularity of the number 19 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Games of chance; Lotteries; Conscious selection; COVID-19; Availability heuristic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52
Date: 2022-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/bore ... tastream/PDF_01/view (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Number 19: Another Victim of the COVID-19 Pandemic? (2023)
Working Paper: Number 19: Another Victim of the COVID‐19 Pandemic? (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ajf:louvlf:2022007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers LFIN from Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain Finance (LFIN) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Séverine De Visscher ().