Policy, political and economic determinants of the evolution of competitive balance in the FIFA women’s football World Cups

Figures & data

Table 1. Policy, political and economic determinants of competitive balance

Determinant	Proxy	Source(s)
Gender equality policy	Policy on gender equality and women’s football	Literature
Participation	Female players playing organised football	FIFA and literature
Population	Number of inhabitants	United Nations (Office for National Statistics for the UK)
Economic development	Gross domestic product per capita, purchasing power parity	International Monetary Fund and United Nations (Office for National Statistics in the UK)
Men’s football legacy	FIFA Men’s World Ranking points	FIFA
Expatriate players	Number of expatriate players
Number of teams	Number of teams
Breakdown per confederation	Number of teams per confederation

Table 2. Descriptive statistics (absolute values)

Variable	Mean	Standard deviation
Goal difference	2.09	1.98
Home advantage	0.13	0.34
Gender equality policy	0.50	0.63
Population	1.85	1.40
GDP per capita	0.95	0.88
Men’s football legacy	32.34	31.75
Expatriate players	0.18	0.19

GDP per capita not available for North Korea so descriptive statistics based on 271 instead of 284 observations.

Figure 1. Evolution of goal difference in FIFA women’s World Cups

Figure 2. Evolution of intra-match competitive balance in FIFA women’s World Cups (in %)

Table 3. Results of robust ordinary least squares regression explaining goal difference

Variable	Coefficient (standard error in brackets) and significance
Home advantage	0.34 (0.31)
Gender equality policy	0.97 (0.29) ***
Population	0.38 (0.07) ***
GDP per capita	0.59 (0.17) ***
Men’s football legacy	−0.02 (0.003) ***
Expatriate players	1.25 (0.63) **
Constant	0.44 (0.14) ***
Observations	271
R^2	0.33

** p < .05; *** p < .01.