Can Professional Football Players Adapt to Air Pollution? Evidence From China

In this paper, we study the impact of air pollution on Chinese professional football players’ performance. Our primary research question is whether the negative effects of air pollution can be mitigated by adaptation, and which cohort of players can have higher adaptability. We find that a higher pollution level during the game, relative to the adapted pollution level in players’ home cities, has a negative and significant impact on the players’ efforts and accuracy. The impact of non-adapted air pollution can be greatly offset by the home advantage, but not by personal attributes such as the higher ability.