Abstract
Numerous factors have been proposed to explain the home advantage in sport. Several authors have suggested that a partisan home crowd enhances home advantage and that this is at least in part a consequence of their influence on officiating. However, while experimental studies examining this phenomenon have high levels of internal validity (since only the “crowd noise” intervention is allowed to vary), they suffer from a lack of external validity, with decision-making in a laboratory setting typically bearing little resemblance to decision-making in live sports settings. Conversely, observational and quasi-experimental studies with high levels of external validity suffer from low levels of internal validity as countless factors besides crowd noise vary. The present study provides a unique opportunity to address these criticisms, by conducting a controlled experiment on the impact of crowd noise on officiating in a live tournament setting. Seventeen qualified judges officiated on thirty Thai boxing bouts in a live international tournament setting featuring “home” and “away” boxers. In each bout, judges were randomized into a “noise” (live sound) or “no crowd noise” (noise-canceling headphones and white noise) condition, resulting in 59 judgments in the “no crowd noise” and 61 in the “crowd noise” condition. The results provide the first experimental evidence of the impact of live crowd noise on officials in sport. A cross-classified statistical model indicated that crowd noise had a statistically significant impact, equating to just over half a point per bout (in the context of five round bouts with the “10-point must” scoring system shared with professional boxing). The practical significance of the findings, their implications for officiating and for the future conduct of crowd noise studies are discussed.
Highlights
Home advantage is defined as “the consistent finding that home teams in sport competitions win over 50 % of games played under a balanced home and away schedule” (Courneya and Carron, 1992, p.14)
Though not necessarily directly applicable, the findings of this present study do offer some support for the results of the experimental studies that used recorded noise to examine crowd noise effects on soccer referees’ decisions
The possibility of determining individual level factors that may mediate crowd noise influences offer avenues for future research, the results of which may influence the training goals and the selection criteria of officials. Another area that has not been explored to any great extent is the differing influence of the content of crowd noise
Summary
Home advantage is defined as “the consistent finding that home teams in sport competitions win over 50 % of games played under a balanced home and away schedule” (Courneya and Carron, 1992, p.14). In the present study the decisions made by participants directly decided the outcome of matches These studies (Nevill et al, 1999, 2002; Balmer et al, 2007; Unkelbach and Memmert, 2010) successfully, demonstrate that crowd noise has an impact on the laboratory-based decisions of study participants, it is unclear as to the extent to which these findings can be generalized to actual live sports settings. In an attempt to redress the issues of using recorded noise in laboratory settings, the present study assessed whether qualified Muay Thai judges scoring of bouts could be influenced by crowd noise and if such an influence would result in any home advantage effect. The hypothesis was that crowd noise would result in judges awarding inflated scores to contestants receiving the greatest level of (home) crowd support
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