We examine whether politically irrelevant events can cause conflicts, by analyzing the effects of professional football games in Europe on protests in Africa—an unintended spillover across the continents. By expanding psychological theories, we argue that the outcomes of the football games in Europe can affect African people's subjective evaluation of domestic politicians, which in turn can trigger protests. By exploiting as-if random variation in the results of 15,102 close football games conditional on betting odds, we find that compared to draw games, close losses of African players’ teams increase peaceful protests in their original countries while not changing the likelihood of riots or armed conflicts. The effect is particularly large for non-ethnic protests targeted at a central government. Close losses also temporarily decrease people's trust in their country's leader. By contrast, close victories do not have equivalent or compensating effects on protests or public opinion. These results suggest asymmetric misattribution: people in Africa unreasonably blame domestic politicians for bad luck in European football games, prompting protests; but they do not credit politicians with football victories.

中文翻译：

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政治无关的事件会导致冲突吗？欧洲职业足球对非洲抗议活动的跨大陆影响

我们通过分析欧洲职业足球比赛对非洲抗议活动的影响——一种无意识的波及各大洲的活动，来检验政治无关的事件是否会引发冲突。通过扩展心理学理论，我们认为欧洲足球比赛的结果会影响非洲人对国内政客的主观评价，进而引发抗议。通过利用以投注赔率为条件的 15,102 场势均力敌的足球比赛结果的随机变化，我们发现，与平局比赛相比，非洲球员球队的势均力敌输球增加了他们原籍国的和平抗议，同时没有改变骚乱的可能性或武装冲突。对于针对中央政府的非种​​族抗议活动，这种影响尤其大。损失惨重也会暂时降低人们对国家领导人的信任。相比之下，势均力敌的胜利对抗议或公众舆论没有同等或补偿的影响。这些结果表明存在不对称的错误归因：非洲人无理指责国内政客在欧洲足球比赛中运气不佳，引发抗议；但他们不会将足球的胜利归功于政客。