Favouritism, social pressure, and gender

Abstract We analyse gender differences in response to social pressure. Our setting provides information on decision-making by both female and male referees towards rewarding extra time in football. The exact score at the time of the decision allows us to evaluate how much it favours the home team and, hence, pleases the audience. Controlling for in-game information that affects the length of extra time per game rules, we find that (especially young) female referees are more susceptible to social pressure and reward less extra time when the home team needs the game to end to secure a win. To confirm that social pressure from the audience drives our findings, we demonstrate that female referees tend to favour home teams more in games with high attendance.