Date of Award
2002
Document Type
Honors Thesis (Open Access)
Department
Colby College. Economics Dept.
Advisor(s)
David W. Findlay
Abstract
I present a study of customer discrimination in the NBA by examining total annual attendance for all 29 teams for the five-season period from 1996 to 2001. Several previous studies have been conducted on this issue and seldom have found evidence of discrimination by measuring the racial composition of a team as the percentage of _white players on the roster. However, using this measure and several alternative measures of racial composition, I find that fans do discriminate against black players, and this discrimination occurs in a variety of ways. Specifically, spectators alter their decisions to attend games based on the percentage of white players on the roster, the percentage of minutes played by white players, the percentage of points scored by white players, the percentage of starts by white players, and the percentage of white players in a nine-man rotation.
Keywords
customer discrimination, NBA, total annual attendance, racial composition of team
Recommended Citation
Tugberk, Carl E., "Above and Beyond the Rim: An Examination of Customer Discrimination in the National Basketball Association" (2002). Honors Theses. Paper 337.https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/337
Copyright
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