Matthew Rockloff – gambling psychology expert behind safer
Matthew Rockloff is one of the most cited gambling researchers in the southern hemisphere and the driving force behind Australia’s evidence-based approach to harm minimisation. As head of the Experimental Gambling Research Laboratory (EGRL) at Central Queensland University, he has spent more than two decades turning behavioural data into policy that shapes how Australians interact with pokies, sports betting apps, and online casinos. His work sits at the crossroads of psychology, economics, and public health, and in 2026 it continues to influence both federal regulation and the broader academic conversation around responsible gambling worldwide.
Early life and education
Rockloff’s academic journey began on the west coast of the United States, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics from the University of California in 1989. He then moved to Texas A&M University for a Master of Science in applied microeconomics, completed in 1994. That dual grounding in economic theory and quantitative method would later distinguish his gambling research from purely clinical approaches. He went on to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology at Florida Atlantic University, graduating in 1999 with a specialisation in social psychology. The combination of an economics background and a psychology doctorate gave him a rare lens through which to study why people gamble, how much they lose, and what structural features of games push behaviour from recreation toward harm.
Academic career timeline
Rockloff’s path from California undergraduate to Australia’s leading gambling psychologist spans more than three decades and two continents. After completing his doctorate in the United States he took a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Nevada, Reno – a fitting location given that Nevada’s gaming industry would become an early testing ground for his behavioural research. He relocated to Queensland in the early 2000s, joined Central Queensland University, and has remained there ever since, building the EGRL from a small research group into a nationally recognised laboratory. The table below maps the key milestones along that trajectory.
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1989 | B.A. in economics, University of California |
| 1994 | M.S. in applied microeconomics, Texas A&M University |
| 1999 | Ph.D. in psychology, Florida Atlantic University |
| 1999-2001 | Post-doctoral fellow, University of Nevada, Reno |
| 2001-present | Faculty member, Central Queensland University |
| 2011-2013 | Named in the top 15 UniJobs Lecturer of the Year awards (three consecutive years) |
| 2017 | Ig Nobel Prize in economics |
| 2023 | Lead author, “Skill-based gambling in Australia” report for Gambling Research Australia |
| 2026 | Co-author, new research published in Addiction and Behavioural Public Policy journals |
The Experimental Gambling Research Laboratory
The EGRL, housed within CQUniversity’s School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, is one of Australia’s premier gambling-focused research units. Rockloff leads a team that includes several full research professors, post-doctoral fellows, and doctoral candidates who collectively hold competitive grants from state governments, non-governmental organisations, and the Australian federal Department of Social Services. The lab’s output covers everything from large-scale prevalence surveys to controlled experiments on electronic gaming machine (EGM) design, and its findings routinely feed into legislative reviews at both state and commonwealth level.
Under Rockloff’s leadership the EGRL has conducted prevalence studies of gambling behaviour in Tasmania (2018), Victoria (2019), and New South Wales (2019), each one helping state regulators calibrate policy responses. The lab has also contributed evidence that led to bans on wagering advertising during general television viewing times, restrictions on punter inducements, mandatory limit-setting tools for online betting platforms, and the creation of Australia’s National Self-Exclusion Register for pokies. These are not abstract academic outputs – they translate directly into rules that affect millions of Australian punters every day.
Key research themes
Rockloff’s publication list runs to more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, and his Google Scholar profile shows nearly 7,000 citations. The breadth is considerable, but several core themes stand out:
- Gambling-related harm measurement – Rockloff co-developed frameworks that define and categorise gambling harm at a population level, including the influential 2016 paper that proposed a taxonomy of harms published in BMC Public Health.
- Electronic gaming machines – Multiple studies on how jackpot structures, near-miss frequencies, and sensory features of pokies influence player behaviour and spending.
- Sports betting among young adults – Recent work exploring how people aged 18-25 move from casual sports betting into harmful patterns, including the 2025 qualitative study published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction.
- Simulated gambling in video games – Ongoing research into whether loot-box mechanics and social-casino apps serve as gateways to real-money gambling for adolescents.
- Safer gambling messaging – Collaborative studies testing the effectiveness of warning labels and intervention messages on betting platforms across Australia, the UK, and the USA.
- Legacy harms – Investigations into how gambling damage persists even after the gambling itself stops, affecting finances, relationships, and mental health long after recovery begins.
The crocodile experiment and the Ig Nobel Prize
No profile of Matthew Rockloff would be complete without the crocodile study. In 2010, Rockloff and colleague Nancy Greer designed an experiment in which participants held a one-metre saltwater crocodile before playing electronic gaming machines. The hypothesis was straightforward – if physiological arousal increases risk-taking, then an encounter with a live predator should amplify gambling behaviour. The results confirmed exactly that, and the study went on to win the 2017 Ig Nobel Prize in economics, awarded at a ceremony at Harvard University by actual Nobel laureates.
The study sounds absurd on the surface, and Rockloff has always been the first to laugh about it. But beneath the humour lies a serious insight into the four psychological risk factors his earlier work identified – excitement, esteem, excess, and escape. The crocodile was a controlled way to isolate excitement as a variable, and the finding that heightened arousal leads to riskier bets has practical implications for how venues design their environments. Bright lights, loud sounds, and adrenaline-pumping atmospheres are not accidental features of casinos – they are structural elements that Rockloff’s research has shown push players toward larger and more frequent wagers.
Impact on Australian gambling policy
Australia holds the dubious distinction of being the world’s most prolific gambling nation, with annual losses approaching A$25 billion – nearly twice the per-capita figure of the next country on the list. Rockloff’s research has been central to the policy response. His team’s data show that gambling-related harm touches roughly one in six Australians, a prevalence rate comparable to that of alcohol-related harm, and this comparison has been instrumental in reframing gambling as a public-health issue rather than a simple matter of personal choice.
Specific policy outcomes linked to EGRL evidence include the items listed below. Each one represents a regulatory change that drew on data generated by Rockloff and his colleagues, either directly through commissioned reports or indirectly through published research that regulators cited in parliamentary inquiries.
| Policy area | EGRL contribution |
|---|---|
| Television advertising restrictions | Evidence on the link between ad exposure and gambling uptake among young people |
| Punter inducement bans | Research demonstrating how bonus-bet offers inflate risk-taking |
| Mandatory limit-setting for online betting | Prevalence data showing online gamblers face elevated harm |
| National Self-Exclusion Register for pokies | Behavioural studies on self-exclusion effectiveness |
| Warnings on video games with gambling-like content | Research on adolescent engagement with simulated gambling |
| Safer gambling messaging | Randomised controlled trials of message wording and placement |
Research in 2025-2026
Rockloff remains highly active. In late 2025 the EGRL published the 20-item Gambling Harms Scale (GHS-20), a streamlined instrument benchmarked to health utility scores and adjusted for comorbidities, designed to give regulators and clinicians a faster way to assess the severity of gambling-related damage. Early 2026 saw a co-authored paper appear in Addiction, and another in Behavioural Public Policy, both continuing the lab’s work on safer gambling interventions and messaging effectiveness across different regulatory environments.
The timing is significant. With the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, global attention on sports-betting regulation has intensified. Rockloff’s body of work on sports-betting harm among young adults and on the efficacy of advertising restrictions positions the EGRL as a key reference point for policymakers navigating the intersection of mega-events and gambling exposure. Australian regulators, who have already implemented many of the measures Rockloff’s team recommended, are frequently cited as a model for other jurisdictions considering tighter controls.
Awards and recognition
- Ig Nobel Prize in economics (2017) for the crocodile-gambling experiment
- Jack Walker Scholar
- Aurel B. Newell Fellow (twice)
- Top 15 UniJobs Lecturer of the Year in Australia (2011, 2012, 2013)
- CQUniversity Student Voice Commendation for distance education (2014)
- Over 6,900 citations on Google Scholar as of 2026
Why his work matters for Australian punters
For anyone who gambles in Australia – whether it is A$10 on a Saturday multi, a few spins on online pokies, or a session at the local RSL – Rockloff’s research is quietly shaping the experience. The pre-commitment tools on betting apps, the warning messages that flash before a deposit, the absence of certain bonus offers that were once commonplace, and the growing conversation around loot boxes in video games all trace back, in part, to evidence his laboratory produced. His career demonstrates that rigorous, sometimes playful, academic inquiry can translate into tangible protections for millions of everyday gamblers across the country.
Rockloff’s influence extends beyond borders as well. International journals, government inquiries in Canada and the UK, and global public-health bodies regularly cite EGRL papers when drafting their own harm-minimisation frameworks. In 2026 his position as one of the world’s leading gambling researchers is well established, and the pipeline of studies coming out of Bundaberg shows no sign of slowing down.
