Thaindian News

Washington, Mar 9 (ANI): A new research from North Carolina State University has revealed that closely contested major sporting events are followed by a significant increase in traffic fatalities for fans of the winning team.

“A previous study showed that traffic fatalities increased in the hours following the Super Bowl. We wanted to see if that held true for other high-profile sporting events and, if so, whether the number of fatalities was influenced by whether the game was a close one,” says Dr. Stacy Wood, Langdon Distinguished Professor of Marketing at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research.

Wood and researchers from the University of South Carolina (USC) evaluated traffic fatalities after 271 games played between 2001 and 2008, including championship, tournament and rivalry games in professional and college football and basketball. The researchers looked at traffic fatality data in the area where the game was played, and in the hometowns of the winning and losing teams.

The researchers found that traffic fatalities increased significantly after close games, and that games which were rated as nail-biters were far more likely to result in traffic fatalities than blow-outs.

Furthermore, researchers found that the increase in fatalities occurred only in places where there were winners - the site of the competition and the hometown of the winning team. “This pattern of results is important in that it suggests that the cause of the relationship might be associated with competition-induced testosterone,” Wood says.

The paper is forthcoming from the Journal of Consumer Research. (ANI)