Assessing and explaining the doping prevalence in cycling

Abstract

While the doping prevalence between elite and amateur sport is typically different, indirect questioning techniques have revealed that the doping prevalence at both levels among the topmost performers is often lower than among the second tier. This was proven for samples of elite athletes as well as for a sample of amateur cyclists, licenced by USA Cycling. The article provides an explanation of this phenomenon, basing on the idea of sport as a consumption capital in the sense of Stigler and Becker’s theory of rational addiction. A formalisation of this idea and simulations, based on this model show that the predictions do qualitatively concur with the results of studies on the prevalence of doping. The potential of formalised models and simulations for the social sciences as well as implications of the results for social scientific theory development are discussed.