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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Guérette, Joël, Blais, Caroline, Fiset, Daniel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
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.
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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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