Chapter 4. Does ethnic heterogeneity of clubs affect member dropout? 97 incorporation of many ethnic differences into social settings can be burdensome by itself. This study’s support for the social disarray explanation does not necessarily mean that intergroup threat has no role to play. The design of this study made it inevitable that the most powerful mechanism of the two suppresses the other. Social disarray’s superiority can have various reasons. Firstly, social disarray encompasses multiple mechanisms and their cumulative effect might be both stronger and more difficult to counteract by individuals. Secondly, intergroup threat and the specific circumstances in which it most likely arises potentially allow for more effective mitigation. For example, when outgroups are homogeneous, positive interethnic contact experiences are more easily extended to other outgroup members, alleviating perceptions and experiences of threat. Additionally, brokerage can help bridge interethnic distance, but brokerage becomes less and less feasible as the number of different groups increases. Thirdly, outgroup threat might also require a low enough ingroup share to occur, in addition to sufficient levels of outgroup homogeneity. Consequently, it is possible that part of its effect on dropout has already been captured by this study’s ingroup measure. Future research could zoom in on the dynamic interplay between relative ingroup size and outgroup fractionalization, as well as on mitigation mechanisms. Furthermore, a crucial, although challenging, step up from this study would be to include data which allow for closer testing of the mediating mechanisms of the three explanations for ethnic heterogeneity’s effect on dropout listed in this study. This will not only require the quantification of large amounts of qualitative data on people’s experiences and emotions, but also extensive mapping of people’s intra- and extra-organizational social networks. An often-heard critique of the measures used for studying ethnic heterogeneity’s effects is that they are colourblind. Consequently, they do not take specific intergroup relations into account. While a strength of this study over many previous studies is that it breaks down ethnic heterogeneity into group specific measurements for ingroup size and outgroup fractionalization, it may be worthwhile to zoom in even further and study how groups respond to variations in the share of specific ethnic outgroups. Especially because Turner and Brown (1978) suggest that ingroup and outgroup relations can be influenced by one’s position in the status hierarchy. Finally, another potential drawback of this study is that time is measured in periods of almost one year and the specific moment of dropout within the season could not
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