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Does fan discrimination exist? Mixed-method investigation of customer discrimination in Chinese professional baseball league

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Abstract

This paper focuses on customer discrimination in the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL). Using the 2005–2017 annual spectator attendance data, we first show that inverse customer discrimination exists for international players. We next explore the roots of customer discrimination from the perspective of economics alongside social psychology. We find customer discrimination in the CPBL a combined outcome of taste-based and statistical discrimination, and can be explained by reference group theory. This study thus aims to develop a sports fans’ customer discrimination scale, which is demonstrated to consist of three major elements: players’ characteristics, prestige and experience, and spectators’ confidence.

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Notes

  1. The 15 stadiums included Taipei City (Tienmu), Taipei County (Hsinchuang), Longtan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Douliou, Chiayee City, Chiayee County, Tainan, Kaohsiung City, Kaohsiung County (Cheng Ching Lake), Pingtung, Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung stadiums. We use the addresses of these stadiums to calculate the location of each stadium via a professional location system of Geographic Information System (GIS), i.e., the URMAP.

  2. (1) The hitter’s total number of slugging episodes alongside the number of being at bat must be greater than zero. (2) The pitcher must have confirmed more than one hitter. (3) Professional minor-league players are not included.

  3. The website of the CPBL is http://www.cpbl.com.tw/html/stadium.asp, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics is http://61.60.106.82/pxweb/Dialog/statfile9.asp, the URMAP is http://www.urmap.com/, and the Central Weather Bureau is http://www.cwb.gov.tw/.

  4. The estimations of semi-log model can be provided by the author on request.

  5. The data source of the MLB is Baseball Reference (https://www.baseball-reference.com/). The NPB data is from the official website of the NPB (http://npb.jp/). The CPBL data is from http://cpblstats.com/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physical Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Jye-Shyan Wang

  2. Department of Economics, Shih Hsin University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Wen-Jhan Jane

  3. Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Yu-Hung Cheng

  4. Physical Education Center, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Tainan, Taiwan

    Pei-Hsin Fang

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  1. Jye-Shyan Wang
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  2. Wen-Jhan Jane
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  3. Yu-Hung Cheng
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  4. Pei-Hsin Fang
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Correspondence to Pei-Hsin Fang.

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Wang, JS., Jane, WJ., Cheng, YH. et al. Does fan discrimination exist? Mixed-method investigation of customer discrimination in Chinese professional baseball league. Eurasian Bus Rev 11, 477–496 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40821-019-00147-4

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