Domestic Violence and Football in Glasgow: Are Reference Points Relevant?

AuthorGary Koop,Colin Jennings,Alex Dickson
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12105
Date01 February 2016
Published date01 February 2016
1
©2015 The Department of Economics, University of Oxford and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd.
OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICSAND STATISTICS, 78, 1 (2016) 0305–9049
doi: 10.1111/obes.12105
Domestic Violence and Football in Glasgow:Are
Reference Points Relevant?*
Alex Dickson, Colin Jennings‡ and Gary Koop
Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1XQ, UK (e-mails:
alex.dickson@strath.ac.uk; gary.koop@strath.ac.uk)
Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, London, WC2R 2LS, UK
(e-mail: colin.jennings@kcl.ac.uk)
Abstract
A growing body of evidence suggests that people exhibit loss aversion – the displeasure
from suffering a loss is larger than the pleasure enjoyedfrom an equivalent-sized gain – and
that expectations are important in determining what is perceived as a loss. Recent research
suggests that disappointing results in sporting fixtures relative to prematch expectations
play an important role in triggering domestic violence (Card and Dahl, 2011), consistent
with the idea of loss aversion around expectations-based reference points.This paper seeks
to investigate whether such behaviour is exhibited by football fans in Glasgow by looking
at the relationship between match outcomes relative to expectations and levels of domestic
violence using a data set that contains every domestic violence incident in Glasgow over a
period of more than eight years. Whilst we find that when the ‘Old-Firm’ Glasgow rivals
Celtic and Rangers play there are large increases in domestic violence (regardless of the
outcome of the match), in other matches disappointing results relative to expectations are
not linked to increased domestic violence, except when those matches occur at the very
end of the season where the title is still being contended.
I. Introduction
It is clear that there is a link between professional sport and spectator violence. The most
visible and notorious example of this is displayedin the behaviour of the football hooligan.1
An arguably more perplexing manifestation of violence related to professional sport has
been highlighted and has been attracting attention from the media, public policy makers
and academics. This is the relationship between domestic violence and professional sport.
JEL Classification numbers: D03; J12.
*We would like to thank Deborah Barton, Bob Hamilton and Martin Smith from Strathclyde Police and Lilian
Liesveld and Mhairi McGowanfrom ASSIST (Advocacy, Support, Safety, Information Services Together) Glasgow,
without the support of whom and provision of data this research would not havebeen possible. We would also like
to thank Rodney Strachan for his valuable comments. In addition, weare very g rateful to the anonymousreferees of
this journal whose comments and suggestions helped us to improve the quality of the paper.
1For a recent economic approach to hooliganism and law enforcement, see Poutvaara and Priks (2009a, b).
2Bulletin
It is more perplexing than hooliganism in that the violence is not committed in public
against rival fans as an extension of the on-field rivalry, but behind closed doors against
spouses and partners.
Perhaps the most high profile example of the link between domestic violence and
football is in Glasgow and relates to the intense traditional rivalry between the ‘Old Firm’
of Celtic and Rangers. After an Old Firm match on Sunday 18 September 2011, domestic
violence incidents in Glasgow more than doubled compared to a football-free Sunday.2
In March 2011, the Scottish Government, the police and the Scottish football community
formed the Joint Action Group (JAG) to ‘protect the good reputation of Scottish football
and to contribute positively to efforts to tackle wider social issues – in particular alcohol
misuse, violence and bigotry’. Tacklingdomestic violence was a centrally stated objective
of the JAG report.3At its simplest, it seems that engaging with a football match provides
an emotional cue that results in an increased likelihood of domestic violence taking place.
In this paper we focus on the relationship between the particular characteristics of football
matches involving the Old Firm teams (both when theyplay each other and when they play
other teams) and variation in the level of domestic violence.4
Academic attention towards domestic violence and professional sport has come in the
form of Card and Dahl (2011). They conduct a study for the US and consider the link
between domestic violence and (American) football. The authors adopt ideas embedded in
prospect theory, as first presented by Kahneman and Tversky (1979), which hypothesizes
that individuals code outcomes as gains or losses relative to a reference point and exhibit
loss aversion, in that a loss givesa greater disutility than the utility from an equivalent-sized
gain. The theory has since been further developed to allow for the reference point to be
formed by expectations rather than simply being defined as the status quo (see, e.g K´o´szegi
and Rabin, 2006), and it is this that permits a clean application of prospect theory to the
link between domestic violence and outcomes of sporting fixtures. Card and Dahl (2011)
investigate whether domestic violence in cities in the US is associated with the features of
the outcome of football games involving the ‘home’team. They hypothesize that fans form
expectations of their team’s performance in a game, that can be proxied by the pregame
betting odds, and evaluate the outcome of the game relative to those expectations. They
find that in their sample as a whole domestic violence increases by approximately 10%
following an unexpected loss. If the sample is split to distinguish between games where
the team is in playoff contention or not, then in games where the team is still in playoff
contention (which accounts for 68% of games in the sample) there is a 13% increase in
domestic violence following an unexpected loss, but no significant effect of unexpected
losses when the team is not in playoff contention. By contrast, they find that there is no
increase in domestic violence associated with expected losses (or indeed a decrease in
domestic violence associated with either unexpected or expected wins). This suggests that,
2See ‘Domestic abuse incidents double after Old Firm match’,Daily Record, 19 September 2011; ‘Domestic abuse
incidents double after Old Firm game’, TheTelegraph, 20 September 2011; ‘Warning over huge rise in Old Firm
domestic abuse’,The Herald, 20 September 2011.
3See http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/925/0123798.pdf. for the Joint Action Group Progress Report,
December 2011.
4Finkel (2007) discusses the psychological mechanisms that lead to domestic violence.
©2015 The Department of Economics, University of Oxford and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT