ABSTRACT
Habit formation in sports game attendance is crucial for sports businesses. Teams with strong habitual attendance sell more tickets and can command higher ticket prices compared with teams without habitual attendance, assuming all other conditions are constant. However, previous empirical studies have found that Korean Professional Baseball League fans do not seem to form attendance habits. This paper revisits this issue using updated panel data, as there have been recent changes in the Korean baseball market (e.g., cultural changes in fan behavior, the introduction of international competition, etc.) by estimating the strength of habitual attendance and testing for the possible occurrence of a structural change in habitual attendance. This study found statistically significant patterns of habitual attendance, although their strength was relatively weak compared with that for Major League Baseball. This structural change from the absence to the presence of such habits occurred in 2006.
