Gender-specific impact of age diversity on the performance of small teams: empirical evidence from professional biathlon relays

Research question: A growing strand of studies either analyzes the effects of age or gender diversity on team performance. We contribute to this literature by analyzing whether there is a gender-specific impact of age diversity on team performance. Based on the categorization-elaboration model, we first predict that age diversity in teams leads to better team performance. Second, we hypothesize that gender-mixed teams with age diversity perform significantly worse than single-sex teams with age diversity. Research methods: Our research question is analyzed for biathlon relays of the seasons 2009/10-2016/17. We apply pooled OLS, Tobit and random effects regressions to explain the relay's shooting precision by the relay's age diversity and the gender composition including several controls. Results and findings: The empirical analysis for male, female and gender-mixed professional biathlon relays supports our first hypothesis. Moreover, gender-mixed teams significantly outperform all-female teams. Implications: Implications of this finding are that sport officials and coaches of professional athletes, should be aware of the positive effect of age diversity on team performance but consider that this link might depend on the gender composition of the respective team.