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Identity, Nostalgia and Happiness Among Migrants: The Case of the Kōshien High School Baseball Tournament in Japan

High school baseball is very popular in Japan. All games of the high school baseball tournaments are publicly broadcasted. This paper hypothesizes that high school baseball influences the happiness level of the Japanese. Individual level data in Japan was used to test this hypothesis. The key findings of the study were as follows. (1) The number of wins of a team representing a prefecture increased the happiness level of its residents. (2) This effect was only observed for residents of large cities and not for other areas. (3) For migrants who had moved from rural to urban areas, the effect of their home team wins was greater than that of the wins of the team representing their current residence. This effect was significant in cases where the cultural climate of the host area differed from that of the migrant’s home area. The findings of this study support the argument that a scarcity of goods related to the residential community increases the influence of high school baseball on happiness. Further, nostalgia for home influences migrants’ happiness, and this influence is greater than the attachment they form to their current residential community.