Expectations as Reference Points: Field Evidence from Professional Soccer

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bartling, Bjoern; Brandes, Leif; Schunk, Daniel
• 署名单位: University of Zurich; University of Warwick; Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2048
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 2646-2661
• 关键词: reference points; expectations; field data

摘要

We show that professional soccer players and their coaches exhibit reference-dependent behavior during matches. Controlling for the state of the match and for unobserved heterogeneity, we show on a minute-by-minute basis that players breach the rules of the game, measured by the referee's assignment of cards, significantly more often if their teams are behind the expected match outcome, measured by preplay betting odds of large professional bookmakers. We further show that coaches implement significantly more offensive substitutions if their teams are behind expectations. Both types of behaviors impair the expected ultimate match outcome of the team, which shows that our findings do not simply reflect fully rational responses to reference-dependent incentive schemes of favorite teams to falling behind. We derive these results in a data set that contains more than 8,200 matches from 12 seasons of the German Bundesliga and 12 seasons of the English Premier League.