One additional positive effect of cancelling March Madness

The NCAA cancelled its season-ending basketball tournament (known as March Madness) earlier this week, due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. This was the first time since 1938 that the tournament had not gone ahead, and it has left fans and players distraught (especially number-one-ranked Kansas). However, other than the benefits in terms of reduced virus spread, there is at least one other margin on which the cancellation is likely to be a positive.

This 2019 article by Dustin White (University of Nebraska at Omaha), Benjamin Cowan (Washington State University), and Jadrian Wooten (Pennsylvania State University), published in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy (open access), looked at the relationship between March Madness participation and college drinking during the 1993, 1997, 1999, and 2001 seasons.

They use data from the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, and compare individual-level student alcohol consumption between students at colleges that qualified for the tournament, and students at colleges that did not quality. They have data on around 26,000 students across those four seasons. White et al. find that:

...tournament participation increases the binge drinking rate of male students by approximately 47% (relative to the average binge rate among males at tournament schools). Furthermore, we find that students are more likely to self-report drunk driving during the tournament.

When comparing the results across genders, they find that:

...the measured increase in binge drinking and number of drinks consumed is concentrated almost exclusively among male students.

When their team qualifies for the NCAA tournament, male students drink more, and binge drink more often, but female students are unaffected. So, with no March Madness this year, college campuses will likely be, at least on one dimension, a little less mad.