Emotional driving: Reference-dependent emotions and risky driving behavior after sporting events

Travis Richardson, Steve Bickley, Ho Fai Ben Chan, Benno Torgler, Shamsunnahar Yasmin and Tim Pawlowski

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Using average vehicle speed data in 10-minute increments at the Traffic Message Channel (TMC) location level, along with precise crash timing and location information, we analyze driving behavior around five Florida stadiums before and after NFL and NBA regular season games from 2015 to 2019. We find no evidence of emotional driving following NBA games, but strong and consistent effects following NFL games, concentrated in predicted-close games that end in disappointing home-team losses -- combining high pre-game suspense with negative outcome valence. These games are associated with significant increases in average vehicle speed within 3 km of stadiums during the first post-game hour, dissipating with increasing time and distance from the stadium. Average vehicle speed increases by up to 3 mph relative to predicted-close games that ended in a win -- an effect several times larger than the typical game day versus non-game day speed differential. Overall, our results highlight how the combination of sustained suspense and negative outcome valence in close sporting contests can spill over into risky post-game driving behavior, underscoring the behavioral and public safety implications of affective cues in large-scale sporting events.

Date: 2026-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.18805 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:arx:papers:2606.18805

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().