Regulatory Protective Measures and Risky Behavior: Should We Be Saved From Ourselves?

We provide robust evidence on the long debated Peltzman effect, by which individuals required to wear protective gear end up taking additional risks potentially offsetting the intended aim of the device. We take advantage of the fact that wearing a visor, a protective device in Ice Hockey, has not always been mandatory throughout the career of professional players.

We exploit within player variation in visor wearing induced by differences in league regulation to estimate the effect of mandatory visor wearing.

We find that wearing a visor substantially increases risky behavior reflected in an additional 0.18 penalty in minutes per game, as compared to the average 0.8 penalty in minutes in our sample. Results are not driven by characteristics of players, playing style, or other league differences. We also find a small negative impact on performance.