Abstract
In the last decades, the concept of sport team identification has been widely used as a theoretical framework in explaining sport fan behavior. Sport team identification is defined as the psychological attachment between a fan and his or her favorite sport team (Wann & Branscombe, 1993). Although a great number of research has helped advance the knowledge regarding the factors that can foster the levels of local team identification and its influenceon fans’ behavior and well-being, few efforts have been made to explain such topics with respect to fans who prefer to identify with distant (i.e., foreign) sport teams. This study attempted to provide an additional insight on factors associating with local and distant team identification.The purpose of the present study was to test the effect of seven factors on local or distant team identification as well as to examine the influence of team identification on specific behaviors and facets of the psychological well-being of sport fans. To ac ...
In the last decades, the concept of sport team identification has been widely used as a theoretical framework in explaining sport fan behavior. Sport team identification is defined as the psychological attachment between a fan and his or her favorite sport team (Wann & Branscombe, 1993). Although a great number of research has helped advance the knowledge regarding the factors that can foster the levels of local team identification and its influenceon fans’ behavior and well-being, few efforts have been made to explain such topics with respect to fans who prefer to identify with distant (i.e., foreign) sport teams. This study attempted to provide an additional insight on factors associating with local and distant team identification.The purpose of the present study was to test the effect of seven factors on local or distant team identification as well as to examine the influence of team identification on specific behaviors and facets of the psychological well-being of sport fans. To achieve this, two quantitative studies were conducted. Study 1 investigated the influential role of vicarious achievement, history and tradition, perceived performance, team similarity, perceived prestige, domain involvement, and need for affiliation in identification with a local and distant professional football (i.e., soccer) team. Data were collected from visitors of three Greek websites (N = 1442), consisting of 1163 local and 279 distant fans. The results of the two confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) indicated that the eight latent factors represented the data fairly well in both datasets. After assessing the psychometric properties of all scales in each sample, the results of the structural equation model (SEM) analysis revealed that the seven independent variables explained a significant amount of variance in local (74%) and distant (66%) team identification. However, local team identification was found to be predicted by vicarious achievement, domain involvement, team similarity, history and tradition, and perceived prestige while the identification with a distant team was found to be positively influenced by vicarious achievement, domain involvement, and team similarity. Study 2 looked for the consequences of local and distant team identification. Specifically, the study examined the interrelationships among the variables of team identification (whether local or distant), basking in reflected glory (BIRG), social connections, collective self-esteem and personal self-esteem. Data were accumulated from the same Greek websites as in Study1 (N = 742). Among them, 623 subjects were grouped as local and 119 as distant fans. Again, the fit indices of the two measurement models to the data and the psychometric properties of all scales used in each segment were inspected and were found satisfactory. Regarding local fans, the findings of the SEM analysis showed that team identification positively impacts BIRGing behaviors, social connections, and collective self-esteem. Moreover, BIRGing behaviors were found to cause social connections and to enhance one’s collective self-esteem. Social connections were found to elevate the levels of collective self-esteem, and personal self-esteem was shown to contribute to fans’ personal self-esteem. With the exception of the relationships between BIRGing and collective self-esteem and between social connections and collective self-esteem, which were found to be non-significant, the same results were observed in the group of distant fans. The theoretical and practical implications of both studies were discussed.
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