Why are Americans Addicted to Baseball? An Empirical Analysis of Fandom in Korea and the U.S

Trenton Smith () and Young Hoon Lee

No 2006-05, Working Papers from School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University

Abstract: Theories of rational addiction posit that certain habit -forming goods "characterized by an increasing marginal utility of consumption "generate predictable dynamic patterns of consumer behavior. It has been suggested that attendance at sporting events represents an example of such a good, as evidenced by the pricing strategies of commercial sports interests. In this essay, we provide new evidence in support of rational addiction for the case of Major League Baseball, but fail to find such support in data from the Korean Professional Baseball League. We then review the scientific literature on sports fans from the perspective of human behavioral ecology and propose a theory of endogenous habit formation among sports fans that could explain our findings.

Keywords: Attendance Demand; Habit Formation; Baseball Addiction; Fan Psychology; Testosterone (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 D83 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2006-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mkt, nep-sea, nep-spo and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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