Color psychology in football
the effect of shirt color on a team's performance in the Dutch Eredivisie
Color psychology is the behavioral term for the phenomenon that colors influence people’s decisions and behavior. In the literature of sports, color psychology is a hot item because several authors have found opposite results in declaring the effects of shirt color. Attrill, Hill & Barton (2008) show a positive long-term effect of red colored shirts in the English Premier League, while Kocher & Sutter (2008) find no effects of shirt color in the German Bundesliga. This paper will contribute to the existing discussion and will provide an analysis on the shirt colors in the Dutch Eredivisie using several variants of the Propensity Score Matching method designed by Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983). The found result in this paper is that red colored teams have an advantage in earning points per game and scoring goals relative to getting goals against. These results can have very important implications for club policy makers who want to change the club colors or for people who want to start up a new football team. According to the results, they should choose the color red as the major color for their home shirts.