Gender-based differences in leisure behaviour: performance, risk-taking and confidence in off-course betting

Previous literature has highlighted the need to consider explicitly gender differences in leisure behaviour. This paper directly addresses this issue by exploring differences in performance, risk propensity and confidence between males and females in off-course horserace betting — a leisure activity which accounted for a turnover of £5116 million in the UK in 1993/4. The justification for this setting resides in the ecological advantages it enjoys and in the fact that recent changes in UK betting legislation suggest that women are likely to form an increasingly important subset of the off-course betting population. The results suggest a mild performance advantage for female over male bettors, contrary to the consensus among earlier work. On comparative risk propensity, the strongest impression to emerge from the results is of significant differences in the way that male and female bettors perceive and react to risk via their betting strategies. In terms of confidence, the traditional notion of greater male confidence is not unequivocally corroborated in the betting environment.