Linn-Brit Bakkenbüll

Are Attractive Female Tennis Players More Successful? An Empirical Analysis

This study examines whether there is a relationship between physical attractiveness of professional female tennis players ranked in the top 100 of the tennis world ranking in 2011 and their sporting success in terms of earned prize money and winning probabilities. OLS-regressions reveal a significantly positive relationship between physical attractiveness and sporting success in terms of prize money for the years 2012 and 2013 as well as for the whole career. Furthermore, a logit-model shows that the larger the difference in physical attractiveness is, the higher is the winning probability for the more attractive player in individual matches.

The Willigness to Pay for a German Win of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil

We examine the value of sporting success of the 2014 Football World Cup in Brazil by using a method that allows measuring non-market goods, the contingent valuation method (CVM). Besides the value of sporting success in form of the willingness-to-pay (WTP), we determine what influences the WTP for different rounds in the tournament. According to our survey in Germany (n=549), the WTP increased with the success of the German national football team and respondents were willing to pay €23.00 on average if Germany became the World Champion 2014. An extrapolation of the WTP of the respondents finds that the German population at large were willing to pay €1.696 billion for becoming World Champion 2014. Tobit regressions show that expectations, intangible and socio-economic factors were significant determinants of the individual WTP.

Willingness to Pay and Accept for Hosting Olympic Games in Germany

This empirical study investigates whether and how much individuals are willing to pay for hosting Olympic Games in Germany. Moreover, it is examined for the first time what individuals are willing to accept to host Olympic Games in their own country if they do not like that. Furthermore, this study identifies determinants that influence the willingness to pay (WTP) including the willingness to accept (WTA) for hosting Olympic Games in Germany. WTP minus WTA is positively driven by the felt national importance of the German Olympic team doing well. Socio-economic factors such as gender, age and income influence this measure in significant ways, too. The extrapolation of the individual WTP and WTA shows that, in the net aggregate, the German population is willing to pay €3.57 billion for hosting the Olympic Games in Germany.