Frontiers in Psychology 研究：体育赛事公平事件对社会信任的溢出效应

摘要

引言：

体育赛事中的公平事件如何跨越娱乐的边界并外溢至观众的社会信任，一直是既有研究中持续存在的争议。本文提出“代理性制度信号”框架，将拥有明确规则、公开执行和可验证结果的竞技场视为一个低成本的诊断窗口，观众据此进行贝叶斯更新。

方法：

本研究将CFPS和CGSS微观数据与微博、知乎文本流及嵌入式信任博弈实验相结合，通过独立双编码从486起候选事件中筛选出涵盖2018年至2025年上半年的63起公平事件数据库，将事件区分为规制型、程序型和实质型三类，并以与焦点事件制度距离排序的六层级信任阶梯来测量信任。识别策略结合了以关注度加权的Callaway-Sant'Anna交错双重差分与合成控制，并加入竞争性中介分析和因果森林分析。

结果：

核心结果表明，程序型事件对社会信任的负向外溢效应绝对值是规制型事件的3.29倍、实质型事件的1.88倍；该效应沿信任阶梯单调衰减，从对裁判组和组委会的−0.612降至对体育之外公共机构的−0.221，即最内层效应的36.1%，再降至对陌生人的普遍信任的−0.129，而亲密关系未显示出可检测的变化，且在控制对事件的不满后，体育之外效应的67.0%仍然存在；代理性制度信号路径承载了51.3%的外溢效应，而道德冲击和媒体可及性分别贡献28.4%和20.3%，三条路径呈现出“情绪先行、认知接管”的时间演化；条件平均处理效应存在显著异质性，政治兴趣和媒体使用均高的子群体反应最为强烈。

讨论：

本研究识别出一种有界且分级的而非弥散的外溢效应，界定了信任更新跨领域的波及范围，并为事件治理和信息披露提供了可操作的机制性证据。

1 引言

竞技体育赛事是现代社会中动员力最强的公共事件之一：数亿观众通过体育场、屏幕和社交平台同时观看，共享一套裁判规则和一套结果，这使竞技场成为一个高度可观察的窗口，公众借此审视社会公平。假球、兴奋剂违规、裁判争议和联赛反腐案件近年来在全球范围内被密集曝光；2022年至2025年间，针对赌博和腐败的调查席卷中国足球，数十名前国脚和官员被终身禁赛，此类案件如今占据热搜榜和主流头条，而不再仅限于体育版面。当观众目睹竞技场规则被公开违反时，认知影响是止步于对赛事本身的失望，还是进一步传导为对竞技场之外制度的信任判断，构成了一个重要但尚未获得严格因果识别的问题。这一问题在三个可分离的层面上提出，而非从单一事件一跃至社会：对产生争议结果的行为主体的信任，即裁判组和组委会；对拥有被违反规则的主体的信任，即联赛、国家单项体育协会及监管它们的体育行政体系；以及对体育之外公共机构的信任，以法院、地方行政部门和公共服务机构衡量，同时还包括对陌生人和亲密关系的信任。政治合法性和政权支持在此既不测量也不主张，溢出一词仅保留用于从前两个层面向第三层面的移动。社会信任支撑着合作、交易和治理效率，因此来自高关注度公共事件的外生冲击值得认真审视。

现有文献从两端接近这一问题，却未将其连接。体育管理研究将结果变量保持在赛事内部：关于体育腐败的信息削弱了对体育组织和社区的信任（），不同类型的球迷在丑闻后以不同方式更新态度（），公众对精英体育机构的信任由赛事表现和治理绩效共同驱动（），兴奋剂事件降低了对赛事公平性的信任，却未明显抑制观看需求（）。信任研究从另一端进入，但以政治和经济危机而非体育作为冲击来源：制度质量在实验室测试中因果性地提升了普遍信任（），交叉滞后分析识别了连接制度信任与社会信任的动态结构（），六国面板证据显示政治信任在丑闻后剧烈波动，随后回归均衡（）。中国的证据同样零散，涵盖公共卫生冲击对公众信任和感知公平的短期抑制（），以及从治理质量经由感知公平和政府信任到福祉的链条（）。两支研究均未追问体育赛事中的公平事件是否会跨领域传导至社会信任。

针对这些空白，本研究以“替代性制度信号”作为解释框架，识别公平事件对观众社会信任的溢出效应。可公开验证的制度样本稀缺，而竞技场具有明确规则、公开执行和可验证结果，是一个低成本可得的诊断窗口；既有研究将信任冲击概括为情绪传染或身份归类，本研究则将其重构为跨领域的推断，即观众据此更新关于制度可信度的贝叶斯信念。本文将公平事件分解为三类，即规制型、程序型和实质型，并将信任分解为按制度距离排序的六层阶梯，从裁判组和组织委员会，经联赛和国家单项体育协会、体育行政系统，到体育之外的公共机构，直至对陌生人的普遍信任和对亲密关系的信任。由此形成的3 × 6溢出矩阵使溢出的范围成为测量对象而非假设，并回应了既有研究将两个维度都处理为单维时所掩盖的类型异质性（; ）。在数据方面，它将中国家庭追踪调查和中国综合社会调查与微博、知乎的文本情感数据以及嵌入式信任博弈的行为数据相融合，对三个来源进行交叉验证，以回应关于主观信任题项测量效度的质疑（）。识别策略以2018年至2025年上半年在中国大陆密集曝光的这些事件构建外生冲击，将Callaway-Sant'Anna交错双重差分与合成控制相结合，并以新闻量和搜索指数对连续处理强度进行加权，从而处理处理组污染和平行趋势违背问题（; ）。机制识别设定了三条竞争性路径，即制度信号、道德冲击和媒体可及性，用外生媒体报道冲击对可及性渠道进行工具化，并使用因果森林定位对处理效应最敏感的观众亚组（; ）。三个中介变量被作为测量构念而非标签来处理：每个都给出明确的题项集，评估其内部一致性和区分效度，并要求在控制对焦点事件的不满后仍能预测竞技场之外各层级的信任，这正是中介变量承载一般化而非事件特定情感的条件。

2 文献综述与理论建构

2.1 类型学瓶颈：公平事件与信任维度的单维化处理

现有对公平事件的大多数分析采用二元化或单维处理。一项使用《马科林公约》类型学的全球数据研究将竞赛操纵分为直接干预、身份篡改和规则违反，并发现各类别在地区分布和年度趋势上存在显著差异（）。一项对中国足球超级联赛球迷的调查显示，联赛治理失败与商业化构成了球迷态度的双重维度，单一的“支持对反对”划分无法捕捉（），一项英国实验报告称，不同观众背景对腐败信息的反应存在显著差异（），而对丑闻回应的分析初步将球迷类型学与事件性质进行了交叉（）。信任维度同样被简单处理：近期测量工作用陌生人面孔信任量表和想象陌生人信任量表取代了广义信任的单题测量，并确认了由具体信任对象与情境交织而成的多维结构（），而基于中国样本的行为验证发现，内群体和外群体信任的信任博弈与调查题目之间相关性明显偏低（）。双重简化所遮蔽的不仅是信任维度的数量，还有它们的排序。信任对象与所观察事件之间的制度距离各不相同，而将裁判组、国家协会和法院合并为一个分数的指数无法显示事件传播了多远，因此任何所报告的溢出效应的波及范围仍无法确定。这也是溢出研究中效应估计不稳定、结论分歧的重要来源。

2.2 因果识别瓶颈：观察数据反事实构建的方法论局限

对这些事件的观察性研究面临严格的因果识别障碍：事件并非随机分配，处理时间交错，双向固定效应模型的估计权重可能变为负值，因此估计量偏离目标ATT。方法论研究表明，在异质性处理效应下，标准交错双重差分会产生糟糕的比较，而组-时平均处理效应才是可靠的估计目标（）；金融领域的重复研究显示，忽视该问题会使估计产生偏差，甚至可能反转符号（）；分解结果表明，在时间异质性下，TWFE估计无法唯一映射到因果估计量（）。合成控制通过加权反事实提供了一条互补路径（），因果森林在多个调节变量下稳健地识别条件平均处理效应（）。关于制度信任的实验证据进一步表明，识别出关联而不揭示机制路径，会掩盖从制度质量到信任更新的作用渠道（）。现有关于体育冲击的研究仍停留在前后比较或简单双重差分，这是结论不一致的主要方法论来源。

2.3 机制黑箱瓶颈：竞争性传导路径识别的缺失

对中间机制的系统性检验仍然缺失。道德情绪是一个候选机制：道德愤怒通过社会学习被放大，而观察者会高估他人的愤怒，从而夸大对群体间敌意的信念（）；表达情绪的第二方惩罚者比仅施加经济惩罚的惩罚者更受信任，因此道德情绪本身传递了可信度信号（）；惩罚的严重程度和应得性调节了该信号的强度（）。制度绩效是第二个候选机制，因为在COVID-19早期阶段政策绩效影响了政治信任（），而危机暴露在中国微观数据中持久地抑制了人际信任，这是一种社会创伤机制（）。信息可及性是第三个候选机制，因为报道强度调节了威胁感知的调节效应（），而关于制度信任与社会信任之间动态结构的交叉滞后证据表明，中介识别必须建立在双向反馈之上（）。对这三条路径的检验仍然是分离的，它们的相对贡献尚未在同一框架内进行比较。

2.4 引入替代信号理论与研究假设

应对这些瓶颈需要一个能够同时容纳类型异质性、严格识别与机制分解的框架。“替代性制度信号”框架基于一个基本观察：可供旁观者依赖的、可公开验证的制度样本极为稀缺，而竞技场受规则约束的性质、开放性与结果可验证性，使其成为一个可低成本获取的独特诊断窗口。当旁观者目睹竞赛中的规则被公开违反时，他们便获得了一个关于规则如何被执行的推断样本，并以贝叶斯方式更新信任，其精度随着信任对象远离竞技场而下降。因此，该框架预测的是一种有梯度的而非均一的反应：对于执行被违反规则的主体，更新最强；对于仅与竞技场共享“执行规则”这一一般属性的制度，更新较弱；而对于具体的个人关系则不存在更新，因为后者依赖直接经验而非制度推断。现有证据支持这一逻辑的时间维度与可信度维度：信息质量缓冲了事件冲击对上海封控期间政治信任的负面影响（），重大公共冲击对社会信任的负面影响存在但在2016至2023年韩国调查中是短暂的（），荷兰面板数据显示制度信任在成年期保持稳定，同时允许在冲击期间出现短暂波动（），六国面板证据报告称丑闻后出现短期波动，随后回归均衡（）。遵循这一逻辑，本文提出三组核心研究假设，包含四个可检验命题。H1a：体育赛事中的公平事件对旁观者的社会信任产生负向溢出；该效应在事件暴露后6至12个月内达到峰值，并在24个月后逐渐衰减。H1b：溢出是有边界且有梯度的，而非均一的；随着与焦点事件的制度距离增加，绝对效应沿信任阶梯单调下降，而亲密关系信任未显示出可检测的变化。H2：溢出效应在不同事件类型间存在系统性差异；由于程序性事件暴露了“规则可被系统性操纵”这一制度诊断信号，其溢出强度显著高于规制性事件与实质性事件（）。H3：替代性制度信号在传导路径中占据主导地位，道德冲击与媒体可及性构成次要路径，且效应在旁观者亚群体间存在系统性异质性，尤其是在政治关注度与媒体使用方面。

3 研究设计

3.1 三类公平事件的类型学筛选与准自然实验的构建

类型学筛查是设计的初步阶段。沿制度信号维度，事件可分为三类：规制性事件，即围绕竞赛规则解释与执行的争议，典型表现为对裁判决定的公开质疑；程序性事件，即违反竞赛程序的系统性操纵，以假球、集体故意消极比赛和非法利益输送为代表；实质性事件，即违反物质与身体规则，以使用兴奋剂为核心。三者在可供观众获取的制度信号强度上存在质的差异，因此分别处理。

事件只有在同时满足三个前提条件时才会进入数据库：官方机构介入调查或公开定性，主流媒体在1周内的报道超过规定阈值，且百度搜索指数在同一时期出现明显峰值。研究以2022年至2024年中国足球超级联赛（CSL）的反腐调查为核心来源，并涵盖CBA、田径和游泳领域的公开事件，构建了覆盖2018年至2025年上半年的数据库。对486起候选事件进行筛查后，保留63起满足全部三个前提条件的事件，包括27起规制性事件、19起程序性事件和17起实质性事件，另有423起因未满足某一前提条件或不属于这三类而被排除。筛查决策过程见图1。

图1

事件的时间分布及其强度差异是交错设计中可识别的来源，见图2：程序性事件在2022年至2024年间明显集中，而实质性事件较为稀疏但单个影响较大。识别标准与编码规则见表1。

图2

表1

三类公平性事件的类型学识别标准、编码规则与编码者间信度。

每行中的裁定分歧、一致率和Krippendorff alpha均指该类别候选流中的纳入决策。在全部486起候选事件中，纳入决策的一致率为92.4%，alpha为0.87，共37次裁定；63起保留事件在类别归属上的一致率为88.9%，alpha为0.84，Cohen kappa为0.83，需要7次裁定；序数关注度水平的alpha为0.91。

编码协议在三个类别中统一适用，且由相同的两名受过训练的编码员将其应用于每一个候选事件。一份书面编码手册为每个前置条件确定了操作规则：官方定性只有在拥有纪律或司法权限的机构发布具名决定、调查通知或制裁名单时才被编码为存在，因此没有可识别发布机构的媒体摘要不符合条件；报道量从首次曝光后 7 天内的三个主流媒体数据库中计数；搜索峰值则根据每日百度指数相对于前 90 天中位数进行编码。两名编码员首先在从 2016 至 2017 年一个不属于分析样本的独立筛选窗口中抽取的 60 个单元上完成了一轮试点，并被要求在进入主轮之前在每个维度上达到至少 0.80 的 Krippendorff alpha，且用于培训的单元均未进入分析样本。随后，他们独立地对全部 486 个候选事件就纳入决定、类别归属和关注水平进行编码，彼此无法获取对方的判断，分歧由一名未参与初始编码的资深研究员解决，该研究员依据编码手册而非通过讨论进行裁定，因此一致性并非通过协商产生。在 486 个候选事件中，纳入决定的一致性达到 92.4%，Krippendorff alpha 为 0.87；63 个保留事件的类别归属一致性达到 88.9%，Krippendorff alpha 为 0.84，Cohen kappa 为 0.83；有序关注水平的 Krippendorff alpha 为 0.91。在 486 个纳入决定中有 37 个、在 63 个类别归属中有 7 个需要裁定。由于百分比一致性未校正偶然因素，并会高估名义变量的信度，因此同时报告了校正偶然因素的系数，按类别流划分的信度见 表 1。

事件强度指标为后续处理强度的加权提供了直接依据。上述准自然实验的构建原则也借鉴了 LATE 框架下局部处理效应的识别规范（）。

3.2 调查微观数据、社交媒体文本与信任博弈的多源数据融合

信任测量在方法论上是分散的，因此该融合设计将不同粒度的测量连接到同一条事件暴露时间线上。CFPS和CGSS微观面板数据提供纵向基线，微博和知乎文本捕捉暴露期间的情绪反应与道德框架，而嵌入式信任博弈则提供事件前后的行为测量，从而校正社会赞许性偏差。这三种来源测量的并非同一信任对象，而它们之间的分工正是使溢出效应的作用范围可被估计的关键。调查微观数据承载体育之外的层级，即制度信任、对陌生人的一般化信任以及对亲密关系的信任。嵌入式面板承载体育之内的层级，即裁判组与组委会、联赛与国家单项体育协会，以及体育行政系统，这些均未出现在通用调查工具中。每一轮面板还重复体育之外的题项，因此两种来源在此处重叠，整条阶梯便建立在同一度量之上。融合架构如图3所示，以暴露时间线为连接主轴，以严格的时间戳对齐为关键设计条件。

图3

文本处理遵循一个针对社会科学情境定制的框架（），从关键词构建事件相关子集，并对以日粒度收集的240万条帖子语料库应用三个并行层次：情感极性、道德框架和机构提及标注。对于行为博弈，嵌入式设计将固定的季度日程与事件触发的增强波次相结合。该面板从2022年第一季度到2025年第二季度每季度开展一次，因此每位受访者在第一个波及自身的事件之前至少被测量一次，并在事件被正式定性后的第1周、第4周和第12周增加三个增强波次。每位受访者的五个测量点进入分析：暴露前最后一次既定波次、三个增强波次，以及暴露后第8个月至第10个月之间的一次既定波次，从而使博弈决策与暴露强度形成可控的时间关系。由于暴露时间无法预知，暴露前测量来自既定日程，而非围绕某一特定事件设计的波次，尚未暴露的受访者则作为对照组，遵循主分析中相同的“尚未处理”逻辑。最后一次暴露后测量落在假设H1a所规定的6至12个月窗口内，因此该面板同时涵盖早期情绪期和后期认知期。因此，该设计在一个事件识别框架下提供三个层面的信任信号：态度、情绪和行为。该面板包含 = 3,200名个体，通过按城市、年龄和性别分层的在线研究面板招募，五个分析波次的完成率均高于78%。

信任被测量为一个由六个层级构成的阶梯，按与焦点事件的制度距离排序，全部重新缩放到统一的0至10度量。排序本身是被检验的对象，因为已有研究表明，普遍信任是由多个具体的信任对象编织而成，而非构成单一维度（），并且在中国样本中，调查题项与行为博弈在不同信任对象上系统性偏离（）。内层将既有研究倾向于合并的对象区分开来：争议比赛中的裁判组与组委会被与联赛及全国单项体育协会分开，而两者又与监管它们的体育行政系统分开。基线分析中使用的普遍社会信任指数保持不变，作为主要结果，阶梯与它并列估计，而非取代它。题项措辞在各轮次间保持不变，调查层级保留两个全国性工具的既定措辞，以使估计值与现有证据保持可比。在嵌入面板上估计的层级使用完成全部五个分析轮次的 = 2,512人的平衡子样本，产生12,560个个体×轮次观测值。由多个题项测量的各层级内部一致性范围为0.81至0.88，验证性因子分析支持各层级的分离，相邻层级之间的最高相关为0.63，非相邻层级之间的相关不超过0.48。六个层级的定义、题项内容、来源和信度见表2。

表2

六个信任层级的定义、题项内容、来源和信度。

所有层级均重新缩放到0至10度量。单题项层级遵循既定的调查措辞，对此不报告alpha。信任博弈转移份额作为行为效度的外部锚点，不属于六个层级之一。

三个中介变量被作为构念来测量，而非被当作标签处理。感知制度信号强度由四个题项测量，分别考察该事件是否表明规则可以被规避、执法具有选择性、监督无效，以及同类行为普遍存在。道德冲击由三个题项测量，分别涉及愤怒、义愤和感知到的背叛，并与文本情感指数进行交叉验证，而该指数本身已在1,200条人工标注的帖子中得到验证，相对于人工标注达到0.83的宏F1值，人工标注自身的Krippendorff alpha为0.85。媒体可及性由三个指标测量，涵盖曝光频率、平台广度和自我报告的关注该案件的难易程度。组合信度介于0.82至0.89之间，平均方差抽取量介于0.61至0.68之间，验证性模型与数据拟合良好，三个构念之间的异质-单质比率均低于0.85的标准，因此这些中介变量在实证上是可以区分的，而非对同一种反应的三个标签。由于一个仅记录对焦点事件不满的中介变量无法承载泛化，每个构念还被要求预测该场域之外各层级的信任，且这一要求作为明确条件而非解释性主张进入识别设计。测量与效度证据见表3。

表3

三个竞争性中介变量的测量与效度。

对嵌入面板的验证性因子分析得出/df = 2.41，CFI = 0.968，TLI = 0.958，RMSEA = 0.038，SRMR = 0.034。所有异质-单质比率均低于0.85的标准。

3.3 结合注意力加权交错DID与合成控制的联合识别策略

处理时点系统性地交错，传统的双向固定效应模型难以恢复目标ATT，因此识别以注意力加权交错双重差分作为主要框架，以Callaway-Sant'Anna的组-时平均处理效应作为估计量。加权步骤将报道强度和搜索指数嵌入权重结构，使高强度事件在等权聚合下不被稀释，如方程1所示。其中表示按注意力加权的总平均处理效应；表示所有暴露组的集合；表示暴露组索引；表示时间索引；表示组-时注意力权重；表示未加权的组-时平均处理效应。

注意力指标结合了媒体报道量和用户主动搜索的强度，并采用对数变换以缓解分布的重尾问题，如公式2所示。其中表示组别-时间注意力强度；表示在时间对组别事件的主流媒体报道数量；表示在时间对组别事件的百度搜索指数；表示报道与搜索之间的混合参数，取值范围为0到1，基线设定为0.5。公式1中的权重等于除以其在样本中所有暴露组别-时间单元上的总和，这保证了权重之和为1，同时保留了相对强度信息。

合成控制作为一项独立的稳健性检验被加入。由于程序性事件的样本较小，且交错DID的精度有限，它通过构建事件前最接近暴露单元的加权组合，提供了一个独立于DID的反事实。其约束优化如公式3所示。其中表示控制单元的权重向量；表示事件前暴露单元的特征向量；表示事件前控制单元池的特征矩阵；表示对角协变量加权矩阵；表示相应维度的全1向量。关于合成控制的最新方法学细节，参见相关综述（）。

联合识别策略如图4所示：DID提供主要分析框架，合成控制为罕见事件提供独立比较，两者交叉检验效应的符号、方向和显著性。

图4

3.4 竞争机制分解与因果森林异质性识别框架

由于替代性制度信号、道德冲击和媒体可及性这三条候选路径并存，单一中介模型无法给出准确的相对贡献，因此竞争性中介框架将三者同时纳入，并对存在潜在内生性的路径进行工具变量处理。媒体可及性的工具变量是地区互联网基础设施密度与暴露时政策监管窗口的交互项，它与个体感知强度相关，同时相对于另外两个中介变量满足排除性约束。核心估计如公式4所示。其中表示个体在时间的信任变化；表示事件暴露指标；表示制度信号强度指标；表示由文本情感指标构建的道德冲击强度；表示媒体可及性由工具变量得到的拟合值；表示控制变量向量；表示控制变量回归系数向量；表示扰动项。

The directed acyclic graph is shown in Figure 5: the three pathways feed into trust change in parallel, the instrument enters only through the media pathway, and surrogate institutional signals are designated dominant, with weight determined by the data. The outcome node is the six tiers of the trust ladder rather than a single trust change, and dissatisfaction with the focal incident enters as a separate node pointing to every tier, separating the component travelling with event specific affect from the component transmitted by institutional inference.

图5

Decomposing an effect into pathways rests on assumptions estimation alone cannot verify, in particular the absence of unmeasured confounding between each mediator and the outcome, so the identification claim is stated and then probed rather than asserted (). Two additional requirements are imposed. First, each mediator must predict trust at the tiers beyond the arena once dissatisfaction with the focal incident is held constant, because a mediator registering only event specific affect cannot carry the claimed generalization. Second, the outer tier estimates are re estimated with that dissatisfaction and its interaction with exposure as controls. Because dissatisfaction is realized after exposure, conditioning on it does not yield a causal decomposition; the conditional estimate is read as a conservative lower bound and the unconditional estimate as its upper bound. The specification is shown in Equation 5.where denotes the trust change of individual at time at ladder tier ; denotes attention weighted incident exposure; denotes dissatisfaction at the level of the focal incident; denotes the control vector and its coefficient vector; and denote individual and time fixed effects; denotes the disturbance term. The coefficient surviving conditioning on at the outer tiers is the quantity bearing on generalization.

Spectator subgroups differ systematically in interpreting incidents, so a uniform effect would conceal distributional information of policy value. The causal forest robustly estimates conditional average treatment effects under multiple covariates (), here age, education, political interest, type of daily media use, urbanization level, and engagement with incident topics; its execution and results are shown in Figure 6. Typological screening, multisource fusion, joint identification, and the causal forest together respond to the triple bottlenecks set out above.

图6

4 实证结果

4.1 基线回归结果：三类事件对社会信任的溢出效应

After cleaning, matching, and deduplication the sample yields = 24,576 valid individual by year observations, spanning the four CFPS waves of 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 and the merged segment of the four CGSS waves of 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2021, covering respondents aged 18 or above who reported at least occasional attention to competitive sports events and resided in cities within the incident exposure timeline. Descriptive statistics are shown in Table 4. Social trust averages 5.32 and institutional trust 6.41, the established Chinese pattern in which institutional trust exceeds generalized trust. The embedded panel tiers follow the same pattern: the officiating crew and organizing committee is the lowest institutionalized target at 5.16, rising to 6.02 for the sport administration system and 6.38 for public institutions outside sport, while strangers stay at 3.94 and close ties at 8.11, so the largest treatment effects do not arise where baseline trust is already lowest.

表 4

主要变量的描述性统计。

= 24,576 的变量在合并的 CFPS 和 CGSS 样本上测量； = 2,512 的变量在平衡嵌入面板子样本上测量，并在其五个分析波次上取平均。

The core estimates of the baseline DID are shown in Table 5. All three categories exert significant negative spillovers on social trust, with procedural incidents largest in absolute terms. With social trust as the dependent variable, the attention weighted ATT of procedural incidents is −0.184 with a standard error of 0.041, about 3.5% of the mean; substantive incidents give −0.098 with a standard error of 0.032 and regulative incidents −0.056 with a standard error of 0.026. On institutional trust the procedural coefficient enlarges to −0.237 with a standard error of 0.048, indicating that trust at the institutional level suffers the deepest damage.

表 5

按注意力加权的交错 DID 基线回归结果。

括号内为在城市层面聚类的稳健标准误；*、** 和 *** 分别表示在 10%、5% 和 1% 水平上显著；所有回归均控制城市和年份固定效应以及基本人口学变量；CFPS 面板部分包含个体固定效应，CGSS 重复横截面部分则以出生队列固定效应替代。

在三类事件中，对亲友的信任均未出现显著变化。规范性事件同样未对陌生人信任产生可检测的变化，因此这种零结果模式本身就是研究发现的一部分，而非残差：反应具有选择性，集中于制度化信任对象，而非均匀分布于整个社会领域。稳定内圈与受冲击外圈的分层模式与替代信号框架相符：诊断性信号触及与陌生人之间的制度化关系，却不扰动具体的人际信任。−0.184 的效应相当于社会信任标准差的 8.6%，处于近期准自然实验研究的中高水平区间。该效应量在 3 年窗口内保持稳定，这一窗口稀释了持续媒体曝光的衰减效应，因此该变化并非公众舆论的短暂波动；然而，它局限于特定信任对象，并在第 24 个月后衰减，因此更宜描述为制度化信任的中期修正，而非态度的持久重塑。动态效应见 图 7。暴露前 12 个月至 1 个月的系数均不显著，支持平行趋势假设；效应在第 2 至 4 个月出现，在第 7 至 9 个月达到峰值 −0.196，并在第 24 个月后衰减，与假设 H1a 所指定的窗口相符。

图 7

4.2 信任阶梯上的效应衰减与泛化边界

对某一事件的不满是否会超出赛场范围，是一个关于效应在不同信任对象上呈现何种形态的问题，这一问题在嵌入面板中得到回答，其中所有六个层级都对同一个人进行测量，并与每位受访者自身在暴露前的基线进行差分，以尚未暴露的受访者作为对照组。基线层级得分在随后以高强度与低强度暴露的受访者之间没有显著差异，最大的标准化差异为0.041，联合检验值为0.62。估计值报告于暴露后第8个月至第10个月之间的预定调查波次，处于事件研究确定的峰值窗口内，并且由于调查数据中注意力加权汇总ATT接近其动态路径的峰值，两组估计值在量级上具有可比性。程序性事件的估计值随着制度距离的增加而单调衰减，从裁判组和组织委员会的−0.612（标准误为0.084），到体育之外公共机构的−0.221（为最内层效应的36.1%），再到对陌生人普遍信任的−0.129，而亲密关系与零无法区分；行为转移份额变动为0.048个标准差。阶梯上相邻层级之间的对比表明这种下降并非噪声：从裁判组和组织委员会到联赛和国家单项体育协会的下降为0.218，标准误为0.079；从那里到体育之外公共机构的下降为0.173，标准误为0.071；从那里到亲密关系的下降为0.190，标准误为0.068。与合并调查数据共享的三个层级在一个标准误内重现了调查估计值，−0.221对−0.237，−0.129对−0.117，−0.031对−0.028，因此该阶梯并非测量工具的人为产物。完整阶梯和泛化检验见表6。

表6

程序性事件沿信任阶梯的效应衰减，嵌入面板。

估计值使用五个分析波次中 = 2,512人的平衡子样本，产生12,560个个体×波次观测值，与暴露前最后一个预定波次进行差分，并报告于暴露后第8个月至第10个月之间的波次。标准误在城市层面聚类；*、**和***分别表示在10%、5%和1%水平上显著。最后一列按照方程5，以事件层面的不满及其与暴露的交互项作为控制变量，重新估计每个层级。

仅靠衰减并不能确定外层是否回应制度性推断，还是仅仅承载对所见比赛的不满，因此在将这种不满保持恒定的条件下对其重新估计。对体育之外公共机构的影响从−0.221降至−0.148，标准误为0.058，且在5%水平上仍然显著，保留了无条件估计的67.0%；对陌生人的普遍信任从−0.129降至−0.081，保留了62.8%。因此，外层回应中约三分之一随对事件本身的不满而变化，约三分之二在控制该不满后仍然存在。由于不满是在暴露之后测量的，条件化界定而非分解了效应，因此可归因于制度性推断的份额介于无条件估计的67.0%至100%之间。规制性和实质性阶梯呈现相同形态但幅度较低，最内层分别为−0.286和−0.365，体育之外效应分别为−0.068和−0.118，而调查值分别为−0.073和−0.126。事件类别与阶梯层级的交互作用见图8。由此得出两个边界：紧密关系在任何类别下都不移动，且本研究未包含合法性信念或政体支持的测量，因此证据所说明的是执行竞赛规则的机构的可信度，并以衰减形式说明体育之外的公共机构，而非政治去合法化。

图8

4.3 跨事件类型的异质性检验：程序性事件的主导地位

不同类型间的效应差异用于检验假设H2。程序性事件相对于规制性事件的放大倍数为3.29，相对于实质性事件为1.88，差异见表7。涉及程序性事件的差异在Wald检验下具有统计显著性，而实质性事件与规制性事件之间的差异不显著，因此类型梯度在其高端得以确立，而在两个较弱类别之间仍不确定。

表7

三类公平事件的效应量比较及显著性检验。

梯度表明，观众对“规则可以被系统性操纵”这一诊断性信号最为敏感，而单独的兴奋剂丑闻虽然引发道德冲击，却较少触发关于规则在竞技场之外如何被执行的负面推断。规则性事件排名最低，因为观众对裁判争议已持有强烈的先验信念，单一的规则解释争议很难在制度层面更新判断，而程序性事件同时暴露了规则可以被规避以及存在共谋网络，在规则层和执行层同时放大了信号。类型梯度与层级梯度是同一矩阵的两种切面：程序性事件在每一层级都占主导，而程序性与规则性效应的比值从裁判组和组织委员会层级的2.14扩大到体育之外公共机构层级的3.25，这表明跨越体育边界的是关于可执行性的推断，而非事件所吸引的关注量。不同因变量和控制变量组合下各事件类别的比较见图9。

图9

4.4 合成控制稳健性检验与时间动态

合成控制为程序性估计添加了独立于DID的反事实证据。暴露集包括2022年11月至2024年上半年中超反腐调查中牵连最深的8个地级市，其识别标准是主办了一家有官员或球员出现在公开调查名单中的俱乐部，供体池包括68个未受影响的地级市。合成单元在事件前对暴露单元拟合良好，RMSPE为0.058，路径偏离在第9个月达到峰值−0.192，与DID估计的−0.184相互印证。稳健性结果见表8。

表8

合成控制稳健性检验结果。

RMSPE基于事件前24个月和事件后24个月计算。该比值将事件后的拟合误差与事件前的拟合误差进行比较，因此大于1的值表明偏离合成路径，接近或低于1的值表明没有偏离。

在虚构事件日期上的效应未能在常规水平上拒绝零假设，因此识别并非源于策略本身的系统性偏差。事件后RMSPE与事件前RMSPE的比值在主分析中为2.22，而零事件安慰剂为0.21，峰值偏离−0.192接近虚构事件日期上最大偏差−0.033的六倍，因此实际暴露城市的变动超出了随机波动可解释的范围。合成控制与暴露城市之间的路径偏离见图10。

图10

4.5 竞争机制分解与因果森林异质性识别

机制分解回应了假设 H3，各路径贡献如表 9所示：替代性制度信号路径承载了总效应的 51.3%，道德冲击占 28.4%，媒体可及性占 20.3%。媒体路径工具变量对强度检验稳健（第一阶段 = 24.7，远高于 Stock-Yogo 阈值），对 Anderson-Rubin 区间也稳健，且三项贡献在 500 次 bootstrap 重抽样下保持稳定，标准误的最大膨胀幅度低于基线的 12%。

表 9

竞争性机制分解的结果。

使效应归零的相关性是指，当中介变量方程与结果方程的扰动项相关性达到该值时，间接效应将降至零。

另有两项检验关乎这些路径能否被解读为机制，而非仅仅是所测量构念之间的相关性。当贡献份额在违反序贯可忽略性假设下重新估计时，各间接效应降至零所对应的扰动项相关性分别为：制度信号路径 0.31，道德冲击 0.24，媒体可及性 0.19，因此占主导地位的路径同时也是最不脆弱的。这些路径在作用范围上也如各自构念定义所预测的那样相互区分：感知到的制度信号强度可预测体育之外对公共机构的信任，标准化系数为 −0.191，在 1% 水平上显著，同时与亲密关系未表现出可检测的关联；而道德冲击对最内层关系层级的预测很强，系数为 −0.283，对体育之外信任的预测则较弱，仅为 −0.058。承载泛化的中介变量应表现为第一种模式，承载事件特定情感的中介变量应表现为第二种模式，正是基于这一点，而非中介份额的大小，制度信号路径被解读为信任泛化的渠道。

道德冲击路径在第 0 至 3 个月达到 41.6%，而替代性制度信号路径在第 4 至 12 个月升至 51.3%，并在第 13 至 24 个月达到峰值 58.1%，呈现出“情感先行、认知接管”的时间模式。三条路径之间的流动如图 11所示。

图 11

因果森林估计揭示了个体层面显著的效应异质性，标准差为 0.112，第 5 百分位与第 95 百分位之间的跨度为 0.37。按核心协变量分组的 CATE 估计如表 10所示。

表 10

由因果森林估计的子组条件平均处理效应。

个体 CATE 的样本均值为 −0.183，与基线 ATT 的 −0.184 仅有微小差异，因为因果森林使用了诚实分割子样本。

政治兴趣和媒体使用是最强的调节变量：两者均高的子组 CATE 达到 −0.348，为全样本均值的 1.90 倍。各子组间异质性的结构如图 12所示。

图 12

个体 CATE 的密度如图 13所示。该分布呈单峰，峰值位于 −0.202，且轻度不对称，中位数为 −0.189，均值为 −0.183，四分位距从 −0.261 到 −0.112；14.4% 的观众低于 −0.30，而 2.7% 高于 +0.05。尽管平均效应为 −0.183，但这种异质性使得任何认为平均值代表所有人的推断都不准确。

图 13

5 讨论与启示

5.1 研究假设的实证支持

四个命题的检验结果汇总于表 11，显示出跨方法和跨数据源的高度一致性。

表 11

研究假设的实证检验结果汇总。

假设 H1a 从动态 DID 曲线和合成控制路径分歧中获得双重支持：峰值位于第 7 至第 9 个月，与预期的 6 至 12 个月窗口吻合，且效应在第 24 个月后大幅衰减，因此信任更新是在中期展开的，而非短暂噪声。假设 H1b 由效应在信任目标上的形态得到证实：绝对效应从裁判组和组织委员会层级的 −0.612 下降到体育之外的 −0.221，以及对陌生人的普遍信任的 −0.129，亲密关系没有变化，且体育之外效应的 67.0% 在对焦点事件不满进行条件化后仍然存在，因此溢出效应是有界且分级的，而非弥散的。

假设 H2 由各类别间的梯度得到验证，程序性事件是规制性事件的 3.29 倍、实质性事件的 1.88 倍，涉及程序性事件的差异在 Wald 检验下具有统计显著性，而两个较弱类别之间的差异则不显著，因此梯度在其上端得到确立，而在规制性与实质性事件之间仍悬而未决。该梯度证实，“规则可以被系统性地操纵”是观众感知到的最强制度诊断信号。

Hypothesis H3 is confirmed jointly by the three channel decomposition and the causal forest: the pathway contributions are 51.3, 28.4, and 20.3%, the temporal division of labor follows “emotion first, cognition takes over,” and a CATE standard deviation of 0.112 with a span of 0.37 between the 5th and the 95th percentile confirms systematic heterogeneity across subgroups. The pathway result holds under the stated identification assumptions, and the sensitivity thresholds of 0.31, 0.24, and 0.19 indicate how much unmeasured confounding each channel could absorb before its contribution vanished.

The joint validity of the four propositions indicates that the surrogate institutional signal framework has strong explanatory power in the Chinese context: spectators do not treat arena fairness incidents as isolated disputes of entertainment consumption but convert them into belief updates about the reliability of the bodies that enforce the violated rules and, in attenuated form, about public institutions sharing with the arena only the general property of enforcing rules. The reach of the update is finite and measurable, since roughly one third of the effect observed at the arena survives to institutions outside sport and none of it reaches concrete personal ties. The finding pushes institutional trust research, whose observation windows were previously political scandals and corruption cases, toward sports events as a publicly verifiable diagnostic source available at low cost, and the stability of the close ties dimension supplies a clear theoretical boundary that corroborates the classic view that trust is not a unitary construct.

5.2 Theoretical contributions and practical implications

The theoretical contributions lie at three levels. Typologically, the three category distinction and the effect gradient show that treating fairness incidents as homogeneous shocks underestimates the strength of trust shocks, and classification by institutional signal supplies new analytical primitives for spillover research. In identification, joining the attention weighted staggered DID with synthetic control, competing mediation, and causal forest diagnostics gives a reusable path “from the average to the distribution,” addressing the bottlenecks of insufficient causal identification and the mechanism black box. At the level of theoretical boundaries, the framework transfers to healthcare, the judiciary, education, and other domains featuring explicit rules, public enforcement, and verifiable outcomes.

These contributions connect to a governance question the Chinese setting poses sharply, namely how fairness, public participation, and high quality sport governance depend on one another. Codified good governance principles place transparency, accountability, and democratic process at the center of federation level reform, and the actors charged with implementing them report that the principles bearing on participation are among the most demanding to put into practice (). Fairness is the component the public can verify without institutional access, because rules, enforcement, and outcomes in competition are observable in real time and by everyone at once. Spectatorship is therefore not passive consumption but the widest available channel of public participation in sport governance: attention supplies a monitoring input at almost no cost, and the fairness of what is observed determines whether that input becomes support or a withdrawal of trust. The results quantify one direction of this loop in the Chinese context: when the observable component of governance quality fails, the monitoring channel transmits the failure outward at a measurable rate, retaining about one third of its initial magnitude at institutions outside sport, and stopping at the boundary of institutionalized trust. High quality sport governance is therefore not only an internal management objective but a condition for preserving the credibility on which the participation channel depends.

The practical implications point to coordinated responses among the authorities implicated by an arena incident and the media that carry it. In the Chinese configuration these authorities are three distinguishable sets of actors. The first is the rule owning bodies, namely the professional league companies and the national single sport associations, which stage the competition, own the rules and the disciplinary procedures, and characterize a case in the first instance; the event organizers discussed below belong to this set. The second is the sport administration departments, namely the General Administration of Sport of China and its provincial and municipal counterparts, which hold policy, funding, and personnel authority over those bodies. The third is the supervisory and judicial organs, whose entry converts a disputed incident into an officially characterized one and which determine liability once conduct crosses disciplinary or criminal thresholds. The response strategies of the first two sets should revolve around the transmission logic of surrogate signals: institutional diagnostic signals are the dominant pathway, so timely, transparent, and verifiable official disclosure supplies reverse diagnostic signals and has the leverage to weaken negative spillovers, with the speed and the substantive content of information governance as the joint conditions for trust repair. Because the effect is largest at the tier of the bodies that own the violated rules, disclosure issued by those bodies acts where the damage is concentrated, whereas the supervisory and judicial organs arrive later and shape the credibility rather than the speed of the response; the decade long reform record indicates that periodic rectification campaigns raise disclosure mainly for the duration of the campaign, consistent with the finding that the effect decays rather than being actively repaired (). As rule owning bodies, event organizers should embed typological screening into their internal risk management systems, placing procedural risks such as collective deliberate underperformance and illicit benefit transfers under the highest priority compliance monitoring rather than focusing only on technical refereeing disputes. Media accessibility still contributes one fifth of the total effect, so inflammatory reporting chasing clicks amplifies the public cost of the trust gap, whereas credible independent disclosure channels at critical junctures compress the transmission window of surrogate signals.

5.3 Scope conditions and the limits of the evidence

Setting the boundary of a claim is part of stating it, and three distinctions carry the interpretation. Dissatisfaction with a particular incident is the largest and least surprising response, measured directly rather than inferred from more distant tiers. Trust in the bodies that own the violated rules is the tier at which the framework does its substantive work, retaining close to two thirds of the innermost effect. Trust in public institutions outside sport is the tier at which the term spillover is warranted, retaining 36.1% of the innermost effect, of which 67.0% survives conditioning on dissatisfaction with the focal incident, a figure bounding the generalized component from below. Beyond that tier the evidence thins quickly: generalized trust in strangers moves by about one fifth of the innermost effect, significantly for procedural incidents, marginally for substantive incidents, and not detectably for regulative incidents, and close ties do not move at all. The claims are set against the supporting evidence in Table 12.

Table 12

Claims, supporting evidence, and scope boundaries.

Two readings are therefore not available. The first is institutional delegitimation: a decline of 0.221 points on a 0 to 10 scale that decays after month 24 is a revision of an evaluation rather than a withdrawal of legitimacy, and neither legitimacy beliefs nor regime support is measured here. The second is political spillover in the strict sense: the outer tier consists of courts, local administrative departments, and public service institutions, asked about as providers of rule bound public services, and no item in the three data sources refers to political institutions. What the results establish is narrower and more usable: a fairness failure in a highly observed arena imposes a measurable and time limited cost on the credibility of the bodies that enforce competition rules, a defined fraction transfers to institutions sharing only the property of enforcing rules, and the transfer stops before reaching the concrete relationships on which everyday cooperation rests.

6 Conclusion

Based on the surrogate institutional signal framework, this study of the spillover effects of fairness incidents in sports events on spectators’ social trust reaches the following core conclusions:

• (1) Fairness incidents in sports events reduce spectators’ trust in the bodies implicated by the incident and, in attenuated form, in public institutions outside sport; the attention weighted effect on social trust is approximately 3.5% of the mean, peaks in months 7 to 9 after incident exposure, and gradually decays after 24 months.

• (2) The spillover is graded rather than diffuse: the absolute effect falls from −0.612 at the tier of the officiating crew and the organizing committee to −0.221 at the tier of public institutions outside sport and to −0.129 for generalized trust in strangers, and 67.0% of the effect at the tier outside sport survives conditioning on dissatisfaction with the focal incident.

• (3) The effects of the three categories of incidents display a systematic gradient; the absolute effect of procedural incidents is 3.29 times that of regulative incidents and 1.88 times that of substantive incidents, confirming that “rules can be systematically manipulated” constitutes the strongest institutional diagnostic signal.

• (4) Surrogate institutional signals are the dominant transmission pathway, carrying 51.3% of the total spillover effect, while moral shock and media accessibility contribute 28.4 and 20.3% respectively, presenting the temporal evolution of “emotion first, cognition takes over.”

• (5) Effects are significantly heterogeneous across spectator subgroups; the CATE of the intersecting subgroup with high political interest and high media use reaches −0.348, which is 1.90 times the full sample mean.

• (6) The stability of the trust in relatives and friends dimension reveals that trust is a layered, multidimensional construct; institutional diagnostic signals spill over only to institutionalized relations with strangers without disturbing established concrete interpersonal trust, and no measure in this study bears on legitimacy beliefs or regime support.

The limitations lie mainly in an incident sample centered on the Chinese context, so external validity across cultures awaits testing, and in the technical constraints of aligning the three data sources temporally at the individual level. The mechanism decomposition further rests on assumptions about unmeasured confounding that sensitivity analysis can bound but not remove, and incident identification retains official characterization as an entry condition, which excludes never characterized incidents and may understate the frequency of the regulative category. The inner tiers of the ladder are measured on an incentivized online panel rather than a probability sample, so the levels observed there should not be read as nationally representative, although the estimated changes are differenced against each respondent’s own pre exposure baseline and reproduce the survey estimates at the shared tiers. Future research can extend to healthcare, the judiciary, and other institutional domains with public diagnostic signals, and introduce higher frequency real time trust measures to characterize the switching point between the emotional and the cognitive pathway more finely.

Statements

Data availability statement

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. The CFPS and CGSS microdata can be obtained upon registration from the Institute of Social Science Survey, Peking University, and the National Survey Research Center, Renmin University of China, respectively. The embedded panel data and the incident database, together with the codebook, the operational coding rules, the adjudication records, and the item wording for the six trust tiers and the three mediators, will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics statement

The studies involving humans were approved by the Guangxi Science and Technology Normal University. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author contributions

CZ: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. MZ: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing.

Funding

The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.

Conflict of interest

The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.

Publisher’s note

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Keywords

bounded spillover, fairness incidents, social trust, staggered difference-in-differences, surrogate institutional signals

Citation

Zhang C and Zhou M (2026) The spillover effects of fairness events in competitive sports events on audience social trust: a quasi natural experimental analysis. Front. Psychol. 17:1932641. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1932641

Received

09 July 2026

Revised

12 September 2026

Accepted

16 September 2026

Published

05 October 2026

Volume

17 - 2026

Edited by

Kaipeng Hu, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, China

Updates

Copyright

© 2026 Zhang and Zhou.

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*Correspondence: Meiling Zhou, 198910222@163.com

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