The willingness to pay for a German win of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This study examines 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), this study determines what influences the WTP for different rounds in the tournament. According to a survey in Germany, 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 €1696 billion for becoming World Champion 2014. Tobit regressions show that expectations, intangible and socio-economic factors were significant determinants of the individual WTP.

KEYWORDS:

• Contingent valuation method (CVM)
• happiness
• public good
• sporting success
• willingness to pay (WTP)

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank PD Dr Pamela Wicker, Dr Stephanie Kiefer and the student assistants of the Institute for Organisational Economics as well as two anonymous referees. The authors are alone responsible for any remaining errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Alexander Dilger http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4659-8047

Notes

1 An English translation of the questionnaire is available on request. It is quite similar to the questionnaire of Wicker et al. (2015).