Causal effects of an absent crowd on performances and refereeing decisions during Covid-19

Alex Bryson, Peter Dolton (), J Reade, Dominik Schreyer and Carl Singleton

No 524, National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers from National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic has induced worldwide natural experiments on the effects of crowds. We exploit one of these experiments that took place over several countries in almost identical settings: professional football matches played behind closed doors within the 2019/20 league seasons. We find large and statistically significant effects on the number of yellow cards issued by referees. Without a crowd, fewer cards were awarded to the away teams, reducing home advantage. These results have implications for the influence of social pressure and crowds on the neutrality of decisions.

Keywords: Attendance; Coronavirus; Covid-19; Home advantage; Natural Experiments; Referee Bias; Social Pressure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D91 L83 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/NIESR-DP-524-4.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Causal effects of an absent crowd on performances and refereeing decisions during Covid-19 (2021)
Working Paper: Causal effects of an absent crowd on performances and refereeing decisions during Covid-19 (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nsr:niesrd:524

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers from National Institute of Economic and Social Research 2 Dean Trench Street Smith Square London SW1P 3HE. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Library & Information Manager ().