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The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on professional sports, notably, forcing the National Hockey League to hold its 2020 playoffs in empty arenas. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to study how crowds may influence penalties awarded by referees in an ecological context. Using data...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8378689/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34415960 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256568 |
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author | Guérette, Joël Blais, Caroline Fiset, Daniel |
author_facet | Guérette, Joël Blais, Caroline Fiset, Daniel |
author_sort | Guérette, Joël |
collection | PubMed |
description | The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on professional sports, notably, forcing the National Hockey League to hold its 2020 playoffs in empty arenas. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to study how crowds may influence penalties awarded by referees in an ecological context. Using data from playoff games played during the COVID-19 pandemic and the previous 5 years (n = 547), we estimate the number of penalties called by referees depending on whether or not spectators were present. The results show an interaction between a team’s status (home; away) and the presence or absence of crowds. Post-hoc analyses reveal that referees awarded significantly more penalties to the away team compared to the home team when there is a crowd present. However, when there are no spectators, the number of penalties awarded to the away and home teams are not significantly different. In order to generalize these results, we took advantage of the extension of the pandemic and the unusual game setting it provided to observe the behavior of referees during the 2020–2021 regular season. Again, using data from the National Hockey League (n = 1639), but also expanding our sample to include Canadian Hockey League games (n = 1709), we also find that the advantage given to the home team by referees when in front of a crowd fades in the absence of spectators. These findings provide new evidence suggesting that social pressure does have an impact on referees’ decision-making, thus contributing to explain the phenomenon of home advantage in professional ice hockey. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8378689 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83786892021-08-21 The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees Guérette, Joël Blais, Caroline Fiset, Daniel PLoS One Research Article The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on professional sports, notably, forcing the National Hockey League to hold its 2020 playoffs in empty arenas. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to study how crowds may influence penalties awarded by referees in an ecological context. Using data from playoff games played during the COVID-19 pandemic and the previous 5 years (n = 547), we estimate the number of penalties called by referees depending on whether or not spectators were present. The results show an interaction between a team’s status (home; away) and the presence or absence of crowds. Post-hoc analyses reveal that referees awarded significantly more penalties to the away team compared to the home team when there is a crowd present. However, when there are no spectators, the number of penalties awarded to the away and home teams are not significantly different. In order to generalize these results, we took advantage of the extension of the pandemic and the unusual game setting it provided to observe the behavior of referees during the 2020–2021 regular season. Again, using data from the National Hockey League (n = 1639), but also expanding our sample to include Canadian Hockey League games (n = 1709), we also find that the advantage given to the home team by referees when in front of a crowd fades in the absence of spectators. These findings provide new evidence suggesting that social pressure does have an impact on referees’ decision-making, thus contributing to explain the phenomenon of home advantage in professional ice hockey. Public Library of Science 2021-08-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8378689/ /pubmed/34415960 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256568 Text en © 2021 Guérette et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Guérette, Joël Blais, Caroline Fiset, Daniel The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees |
title | The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees |
title_full | The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees |
title_fullStr | The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees |
title_full_unstemmed | The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees |
title_short | The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees |
title_sort | absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by national hockey league referees |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8378689/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34415960 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256568 |
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