Psychological Pressure and Team Performance

Jan C. van Ours
Additional contact information
Jan C. van Ours: Erasmus University Rotterdam

No 26-005/V, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: Team production is increasingly important for economic outcomes, yet the factors driving team performance remain poorly understood. This paper examines the influence of psychological factors on team performance using data from the top divisions of the five major European football leagues, with a particular focus on the phenomenon of home advantage. Home advantage has been widely studied, and research has reached a point where further progress is challenging. This study offers a modest but insightful contribution by distinguishing between goals and expected goals to separate the creation of scoring opportunities from the conversion of those chances into actual goals, which reflects individual performance. The analysis shows that home teams not only generate more scoring chances but also convert them into goals more efficiently. In the absence of a stadium crowd, home advantages in goals and expected goals are substantially reduced, and the home advantage in the conversion of expected goals into actual goals is virtually absent. These findings suggest that psychological factors can be stimulating and have a positive effect on productivity, rather than workers choking under pressure and thereby decreasing their productivity.

Keywords: Home advantage; professional football; expected goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 L83 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/26005.pdf (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:tin:wpaper:20260005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().