Abstract: Triggered by rather surprising reports that Macau residents are less keen on gambling, anonymous questionnaire was designed to explore risk perception and gambling behavior among Macau residents. Results revealed that (1) the warning sign provided by the local Casino would neither dissuade nor persuade one to gamble; (2) the knowledge of “financial help from social network” did not permit prediction of gambling preference; (3) the multiple-play and single-play gambles were in fact so utterly different that the short-run one was perhaps not based on the expected value rule; (4) the predictions of the sanction systems proposed by institutional view of culture were consistent with the observed findings that the government employees gamble less than non-government employees and that the more likely a resident was recognized in a Casio the less likely he or she was going to gamble; (5) some “intrinsic tendency” related variables were gender and mother tongue, which implied that the observed difference in gambling was rooted in long-standing cultural value; (6) the education level was a good predictor of gambling. The theoretical implications for these findings in risk-taking were discussed.

Key words: Gambling behavior, warning sign, social network, multiple-play gambles, demographic variable