Nobody’s Innocent: The Role of Customers in the Doping Dilemma

Abstract

Customers who boycott an organization after some scandal may actually exacerbate the fraud problem they would like to prevent. This conclusion is derived from a game-theoretic model that introduces a third player into the standard inspection game. Focusing on the example of doping in professional sports, we observe that doping is prevalent in equilibrium because customers undermine an organizer’s incentives to inspect the athletes. Establishing transparency about doping tests is necessary but not sufficient to overcome this dilemma. Our analysis has practical implications for the design of anti-doping policies as well as for other situations of fraudulent activities.