Does a home advantage effect exist in international track and field athletics?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Purpose: This paper investigates home advantage in the context of the IAAF World Championships and the IAAF World Indoor Championships. Design: Our study includes 31 editions of these competitions held between 1987 and 2018. Using three key performance indicators (KPIs) we analysed how host nations had performed when competing at home compared with how they performed in the editions immediately before and after hosting. Findings: In the case of the IAAF World Indoor Championships, we found a statistically significant home advantage effect for all the KPIs examined (p < 0.05). No significant home advantage effect was evident in the IAAF World Championships in terms of two KPIs (p > 0.10), although a close to statistically significant home advantage effect was observed for one KPI (p = 0.06). Practical implications: Host nations should be cognisant of such variations in advance of bidding to host these IAAF competitions, particularly if enhancing performance at home is strategically important to them. Research contribution: A key learning point from our study is that the way in which researchers define performance may well have a bearing on the extent to which a home advantage in individual sports that are scored objectively such as athletics is apparent.