Multiple-interaction kinetic modeling of a virtual-item gambling economy

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of online gambling sites, which has made gambling more accessible with a consequent rise in related problems, such as addiction. Hence, the analysis of the gambling behavior at both the individual and the aggregate levels has become the object of several investigations. In this paper, resorting to classical methods of the kinetic theory, we describe the behavior of a multiagent system of gamblers participating in lottery-type games on a virtual-item gambling market. The comparison with previous, often empirical, results highlights the ability of the kinetic approach to explain how the simple microscopic rules of a gambling-type game produce complex collective trends, which might be difficult to interpret precisely by looking only at the available data.