Do People Value Racial Diversity? Evidence from Nielsen Ratings

Abstract

Nielsen ratings for ABC's Monday Night Football are significantly higher when the game involves a black quarterback. In this paper, we consider competing explanations for this effect. First, quarterback race might proxy for other player or team attributes. Second, black viewership patterns might be sensitive to quarterback race. Third, viewers of all races might be exhibiting a taste for diversity. We use both ratings data and evidence on racial attitudes from the General Social Survey to test these hypotheses empirically. The evidence strongly supports the taste-fordiversity hypothesis, while suggesting some role for black own-race preferences as well.

Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV's 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing

“…The 14 A number of previous economics papers have made use of Nielsen ratings data, mainly to investigate issues of racial preference or discrimination. Kanazawa and Funk (2001) examine Nielson Ratings for professional basketball games as a function of white player participation; Aldrich, Arcidiacono, and Vigdor (2005) examine Nielsen ratings for ABC's Monday Night Football as a function of quarterback race; and Myers (2008) examines how the racial makeup of a local television news staff affects ratings. These papers examine Nielson ratings as the variable of interest and investigate determinants of ratings.…”

Discrimination Data Analysis: A Multi-disciplinary Bibliography

“…Research has covered discrimination in hiring, in retaining (along seasons), in segregating (to specific game roles), and in salary of players, as well as customer discrimination. The last topic is also known as fan discrimination, typically measured using TV audience (Aldrich et al, 2005), game attendance (Foley & Smith, 2007;Hersch, 2009;Wilson & Ying, 2003), the trading value of sport cards (Broyles & Keen, 2010;Primm et al, 2011), the votes for best player awards (Jewell et al, 2002). As far as salary discrimination in professional sports is concerned with, there is an extensive literature on the subject.…”

Does the River Spill Over? Estimating the Economic Returns to Attending a Racially Diverse College

“…While some research has touched on the subject of classroom racial composition and the quality of education at the primary or secondary levels (Hanushek et al 2003; Hoxby 2000; Rivkin 2000), none of these studies provide any evidence consistent with the hypothesis that racial diversity improves education. Indeed, most existing studies report adverse effects of racial or ethnic diversity on a host of outcomes (see, e.g., Alesina, Baqir, and Easterly 1999; Alesina and La Ferrara 2000, 2001; Easterly and Levine 1997; Gugerty and Miguel 2005; Vigdor 2004; see Aldrich, Arcidiacono, and Vigdor 2005 for a notable exception). Previous work analyzing the impact of diversity on higher education has generally not focused on the outcome measures usually associated with the literature on college quality, such as postgraduate earnings, and has relied primarily on correlational evidence (Bowen and Bok 1998; Gurin 1999).…”