PurposeThere is a limited amount of home advantage research concerned with winter sports. There is also a distinct lack of studies that investigate home advantage in the context of para sport events. This paper addresses this gap in the knowledge by examining home advantage in the Winter Paralympic Games.MethodsUsing a standardised measure of success, we compared the performances of host nations at home with their own performances away from home between 1976 and 2014. Both country level and individual sport level analysis is conducted for this time period. Comparisons are also drawn with the Winter Olympic Games since 1992, the point from which both the Winter Olympic Games and the Winter Paralympic Games have been hosted by the same nations and in the same years.ResultsClear evidence of a home advantage effect in the Winter Paralympic Games was found at country level. When examining individual sports, only alpine skiing and cross country skiing returned a significant home advantage effect. When comparing home advantage in the Winter Paralympic Games with the Winter Olympic Games for the last seven host nations (1992–2014), we found that home advantage was generally more pronounced (although not a statistically significant difference) in the case of the former.ConclusionThe causes of home advantage in the Winter Paralympic Games are unclear and should be investigated further.

PurposeThere is a paucity of home advantage research set in the context of para-sport events. It is this gap in the knowledge that this paper addresses by investigating the prevalence and size of home advantage in the Summer Paralympic Games.MethodsUsing a standardised measure of success, we compared the performances of nations when competing at home with their own performances away from home in the competition between 1960 and 2016. Both country-level and individual sport-level analyses were conducted for this time frame. A Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to determine whether there was a genuine difference in nations’ performance under host and non-host conditions. Spearman’s rank-order correlation was run to assess the relationship between nation quality and home advantage.ResultsStrong evidence of a home advantage effect in the Summer Paralympic Games was found at country level (p < 0.01). When examining individual sports, only athletics, table tennis, and wheelchair fencing returned a significant home advantage effect (p < 0.05). Possible explanations for these findings are discussed. The size of the home advantage effect was not significantly correlated with the quality or strength of the host nation (p > 0.10).ConclusionWhile our results confirm that home advantage is prevalent in the Summer Paralympic Games at an overall country level and within specific sports, they do not explain fully why such an effect does exist. Future studies should investigate the causes of home advantage in the competition and also draw comparisons with the Summer Olympic Games to explore any differences between para-sport events and able-bodied events.

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Objectives. Research examining the phenomenon of home advantage in international multi-sport competitions is limited to the Olympic Games. This paper investigates the prevalence of home advantage in the Commonwealth Games. The paper also explores the relative impact of travel on performance in the Commonwealth Games. Methods. Home and away performances for all previous host nations were examined using the standardised measure of market share, regarded by recent European studies as the most robust indicator of a nation’s sporting performance. For each host nation, the host effect was calculated as the difference between their average home and away performances. Furthermore, the market share values for each host nation were analysed relative to the distance travelled by them (in terms of the number of time zones crossed) in every edition. This exercise was extended to all nations that have sent a team to the Commonwealth Games in the post-war era. Results. The research found that, with the exception of England, all previous host nations experienced a positive host effect in the Commonwealth Games. Furthermore, for the majority of nations it was found that performance is negatively correlated with distance travelled. In other words, as distance travelled increases, performance deteriorates. Conclusion. The findings suggest that future host nations of the event can expect to achieve an elevated level of performance when competing on home soil. This may in part be attributable to their athletes not having travel outside their own time zone. Direction for future research is offered.

This paper reviews India's performance in the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games measured using four performance indicators -gold medals, total medals, total points (three for gold, two for silver and one for bronze) and market share (points won as a percentage of points awarded). It is argued that India over-achieved in 2010 on all four of these measures relative to what its performances in recent editions of the event might predict, even after accounting for likely home advantage. Whilst factors associated with competing at home may well have contributed to an elevated level of performance by Indian athletes at Delhi 2010, there is also some evidence to indicate that India is an improved sporting nation generally. Therefore, the authors propose that India's success in Delhi 2010 was the result of a potent combination of qualitatively stronger athletes and a strong host nation effect. The management implications of this research are two-fold. First, it is possible for nations to exercise control over certain advantages linked to hosting the event such as flexibility in the selection of sports contested. Second, non-host nations may be able to mitigate certain disadvantages through proper planning, for example, through acclimatisation programmes for their athletes and specialising in optional sports to be contested in forthcoming editions.