Abstract

Keywords

JEL classification

۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Data and descriptive statistics

۳٫ Crowd support and Players’ Performance: An empirical analysis

۳٫۱٫ The home advantage in Points with and without the crowd

۳٫۲٫ Different impact in the first or in the second half?

۳٫۳٫ Impact on home and away Teams’ goals

۳٫۴٫ Other measures of performance: Shots, shots on target and corners

۴٫ Referees’ decisions with and without spectators

۵٫ Concluding remarks

Appendix

References

Abstract

Social pressure may have relevant consequences in many contexts but it is hard to evaluate it empirically. In this paper we exploit a natural experiment in soccer to provide clear evidence of its effects. We aim to study how social pressure from the crowd in a stadium affects both players and referees. While in normal matches crowd support may be correlated to a host of variables affecting the outcome of interest, we exploit the fact that after the health emergency for the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, soccer matches in top European Leagues have been allowed only behind closed doors, that is, without spectators in the stadiums. We use data of first and second division of five major European Leagues (Germany, Spain, England, Italy and Portugal) for the last 10 seasons and compare – using a differences-in-differences analysis – several outcomes (determined by players’ performance and referees’ decisions) of matches played with crowd support to the same outcomes when matches were played without crowd. We find considerable effects of the pressure from the crowd: while with the support of the crowd a considerable home advantage emerges in various measures of performance (points, goals, shots, etc.), this advantage is almost halved when matches are played behind closed doors.

۱٫ Introduction

Sociologists and psychologists have long recognized the influence of social factors on the decisions and behaviors of agents.1 Economists only recently have begun to show that social pressure may be an important factor affecting individual preferences and behavior (Akerlof, 1980; Bernheim, 1994; Becker and Murphy, 2000; Benabou and Tirole, 2006).

In Economics it is now usual to assume that individuals are motivated not only by extrinsic or monetary incentives: they are also affected by social considerations, by the need to be approved socially or by the desire to please others or to avoid displeasures for them and people tend to conform to social pressure to receive social recognition or to avoid social sanctions.

Social pressure may have relevant consequences in many contexts but it is hard to evaluate it empirically, since it is hard to observe exogenous changes in the social groups or networks and it can be hard to disentangle social pressure from other factors, since variations in social pressure could be related to a number of other unobserved factors.