Massachusetts’ three resort casinos are largely having a positive impact on the state’s economy, even as a downturn in business for restaurants and bars in and around Springfield may be attributed to visitors who are playing the slot machines and gaming tables at MGM Springfield are also drinking and dining there.
“In aggregate, this was a very smart decision to create domestic casinos,” Robert Williams, a clinical psychologist and professor of health sciences at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, told the Massachusetts Gaming Commission at a virtual meeting Thursday.
Williams and Rachel Volberg, research professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, are the principal investigators for an initiative called Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts.
