Kiernan Gordon publishes paper in Sport Management Review

The publication examines the relationship between professional sporting events and vehicular crashes

Kiernan Gordon, Ph.D., assistant professor of sport and recreation management
Kiernan Gordon, Ph.D., associate professor of sport and recreation management

Kiernan Gordon, Ph.D., associate professor of sport and recreation management in the Department of Business, has published a new paper examining the relationship between professional sporting events and vehicular crashes.

The publication, "The temporal and spatial relationships between professional sport events and reported vehicular crashes: An analysis of Cleveland, Ohio," was published in Sport Management Review, one of the premier journals about sport management, marketing, and governance. The paper was co-authored with Gidon Jakar, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Sport Management at the University of Florida, and Qian He, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland.

Inspired by the Vision Zero initiative, the study explores the relationship between professional sporting events and vehicular crashes by examining crash data, game times, and venues using longitudinal data from Cleveland, Ohio, between the years 2017 through 2019.

The authors employ two multivariate modeling analyses and spatial statistical techniques to examine the extent to which sporting events are related to car crashes before, during, and after events; the spatial relationship between where the venues are located; and the number of crashes.

The temporal analyses show that crashes with damage significantly increase after games with higher attendance, such major football games. Meanwhile, a spatial analysis demonstrates that the location of the sports venue may be associated with the number of crashes, while the significance varies across spatial distances.

This is one of many collaborations between Jakar and Gordon, whose collaborations explore the unintended, negative consequences of elite sport venue design and construction in urban spaces.