Sports Management Commons^™

Online Fan Communities: Welcoming Behavior, Brand Community Markers, And Multiple Identities In Sports Fandom, Blaine R. Huber

Doctoral Dissertations

Online fan communities have revolutionized the way sport consumers engage with fellow fans and the sports product. The traditional regional boundaries that once characterized sports fandom have been mitigated by the emergence of new media, social media platforms, and online fan communities. This dissertation explores the non-geographically bound nature of contemporary sports fan communities, examining the evolving dynamics of fan behavior in the digital age. In Study 1, an interactional perspective is employed to explore online fan socialization. The focus is on how new fans' self-presentation influences acceptance within NFL team-specific Reddit communities. Utilizing data mining, textual analysis, and qualitative …

The Esport Points Of Attachment Index (Epai): Exploring Psychological Connections Of Esport Consumers On Behavioral Intentions Toward Esport Organizations, Se Jin Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the literature gap in understanding the different psychological mechanisms of eSport consumers, as determined by their various points of attachment they possess depending on different sport contexts. The electronic sports (eSports) industry has been growing rapidly in popularity, but exploration of eSport fandom has been limited. Especially, a better understanding of the eSport consumers’ behavior and their psychological connection to particular eSports and teams is necessary. The first study in this dissertation identifies the points of attachment in eSport fans, based on an extensive literature review. The second study develops and validates the eSport Points of Attachment …

“It's Like You're Trying To Get A Meeting With The Pope”: A Narrative Inquiry On Experiences Of Social Work Field Staff Establishing Field Placements In Sport, Lauren Beasley

Doctoral Dissertations

Social work in sport is a growing subspecialty of social work practice. However, there is limited research on the training of social work students to work in a sport setting. As field education is considered the signature pedagogy of social work education, more insights are needed on social work field internships in sport organizations. To fill this gap in the literature, the purpose of this narrative inquiry was to understand social work field staff's narratives of their experiences establishing sport-specific field placements through their lived stories. The study was guided by three research questions: (1) What narratives do social work …

Uncovering The Gendered Sport Workplace: A Field Study In Men’S Professional Sports, Lauren C. Hindman

Doctoral Dissertations

Women working in sport management are underrepresented and face sexism and harassment. While previous research has explained such disproportions and discrimination through examining the behaviors of individual men and women, in this dissertation, I instead examined ways in which sport organizations are “gendered;” that is, how ideas and norms about gender are embedded into sport organizations’ structures and social processes in ways that create and reproduce organizational inequalities. Taking a critical approach grounded in gendered organization theory, I conducted an ethnographic study inside the administrative offices of two men’s professional sports teams. Data include 165 hours of field observations, 29 …

Multiple Identities In Sport Fandom: Balance, Conflict, & Negotiation, Aaron Mansfield

Doctoral Dissertations

Simultaneous to the sport industry’s ascent, obesity has become an issue of growing societal concern. Scholars have explored the role of social-psychological identification in both fandom and physical health, but have not yet explored the intersection of the two. Throughout life, individuals must negotiate all of their identities, including their attachment to sport teams, yet understanding of role identity within sport management is limited. Likewise, scholars have noted the need for greater illumination of the relationship between fandom and physical well-being. I address these gaps through three studies. In Study One, I completed semi-structured interviews with individuals who consider both …

Covering All Their Bases: An Investigation Into Identity Covering In The Sport Workplace, Jeffrey Maccharles

Doctoral Dissertations

The sport industry has historically struggled to diversify its workforce. However, shifting racial and ethnic demographics in the United States in the coming decades, and greater numbers of individuals identifying as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBT), will soon force its hand. Recruiting and retaining a talented workforce from a diverse labor pool will require that sport organizations ensure their workplaces are inclusive spaces where employees can present their authentic selves without fear. Unfortunately, employees from marginalized groups often face implicit and explicit pressures to downplay aspects of their stigmatized identity through identity covering, which can have negative effects for …

Corporate Social Responsibility Authenticity: Csr Authenticity On Consumer Behavioral Intentions Toward A Sport Organization, Soyoung Joo

Doctoral Dissertations

While authenticity has been researched as a vital concept in various marketing streams, little is known in regard to consumer perceptions of authenticity in a CSR program and its effects on consumer responses. In particular, prior research on authenticity in CSR has not identified authenticity dimensions that are germane in the context of CSR in sport. The purpose of the current research is to (1) elucidate the key dimensions of CSR authenticity that are appropriate to the context of CSR in sport, (2) develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure authenticity in CSR activities in sport organizations, and (3) …

Exploring The Role Of Collective Narcissism In Sport Team Identification, Ben Larkin

Doctoral Dissertations

Team identification is among the most widely studied concepts in sport fan behavior. This is largely due to the fact that highly identified fans exhibit drastically different and more avid consumption and purchase behavior compared to those low and/or moderate on team identification. Most notably, this has been manifested in a greater propensity to attend games, watch the team on television, and purchase team merchandise. While the study of team identification has focused both on its development and outcomes, one constant is that scholars have generally assumed team identification to take the form of a healthy and positive team attachment. …

The Role Of Mentoring For Women In Upper Management In The National Basketball Association (Nba), Manuela Picariello

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite years of progress by women in the workforce, climbing the corporate ladder is still a very daunting task for most women (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Evans, 2010; McKinsey Report, 2013), and occupational segregation still exists (Davidson & Burke, 2011). Research studies have reported that mentoring in general is critical to upward mobility (Allen, Eby, O’Brien, & Lentz, 2008; Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004; Eby, Allen, Evans, Ng, & DuBois, 2008). To date there has not been a study with a focus on mentoring and female executives in professional sport. In the 2014 Racial and Gender Report Card …

Mega Versus Local Sport Sponsorships, Jakeun Koo

Doctoral Dissertations

The present study aims to fill the gap by comparing mega sport sponsorships to local sport sponsorships relative to consumers’ perceptions. Specifically, the study examines whether or not event size has significant impact on consumers’ perceptions of goodwill. In the relationship between event size and perceived goodwill, sponsorship duration and sponsor-event congruence are tested as moderating variables. Finally, it is anticipated that perceived goodwill affects attitudes toward the sponsor, subsequently influencing purchase intentions. To support the hypotheses, the current study conducted an experiment with a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design: (1) event size, (2) sponsorship duration, and …

Sport Tourism, Destination Image And College Football Games: The Recreational Vehicle Tailgater, Cheryl Rebecca Rode

Doctoral Dissertations

Attending sporting events is a popular leisure and recreation activity and more individuals are willing and able to travel greater distances to attend these events. In particular, college football athletics has seen tremendous growth in coverage with conference realignment, television deals, national exposure and other endorsement deals. Students, fans and alumni are spending the weekends in the fall to travel to and participate in college football game day activities including tailgating, socializing and attending the game (Drenton, Peters, Leigh & Hollenbeck, 2009). A subculture within the culture of college football fans are people who travel to games in recreational vehicles …

Fan Response To League Playoff Structure And Consecutive Season Competitive Balance In Professional Sports, Ryan L. Spalding

Doctoral Dissertations

Competitive balance (the level of equality of playing talent across teams) is presumed to be a necessary element for league success due to the unique inter-dependent economic nature of professional sports which requires teams to have financially healthy rivals in order to field games (Rottenberg 1956). Underlying this notion is the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis, which suggests that a fan’s interest in professional sports is dependent on various levels of uncertainty of outcome: individual game uncertainty (who will win the game), individual season uncertainty (who will win the championship), and consecutive season uncertainty (does the same team win the championship …

Sociotechnical Consumption: A Digital Story Of Empowerment And Social Consumer Experiences, Mujde Yuksel

Doctoral Dissertations

Digital technologies have become a ubiquitous element in contemporary consumption practices. Consumers shop online, take online classes, play fantasy sports, date online, have virtual personal trainers in their phones and even live virtual lives. How do such digital experiences integrate into and reflect upon consumption experiences in the material world? In this dissertation, I propose a theory of sociotechnical consumption that explores this relationship through the digital empowerment (technical) and social interaction (social) elements embedded in consumer products and services in digital spaces. Accordingly, I extend the concept of sociotechnical to the study of consumer behavior, advocating the perspective that …

Sec Football Away Game Consumption: The Roles Of Motives, Subcultural Identification, Contextual Dimensions And Destination Image In Sport Tourism, Robert Bruce Daniell

Doctoral Dissertations

The popularity of college football, specifically Southeastern Conference (SEC) football, is at an all-time high. Extant research analyzes consumer behavior in sport consumption settings; however, the away game sport tourist is often overlooked. Given the economic impacts associated with sport tourism, a deeper understanding of the college football sport tourist is desirable. This study utilized a research model grounded in social identity theory and motivation theory to examine the relationships among various sport consumption motives, subcultural identification, and destination image applied to SEC football away game sport tourists.

The results of the study indicate that SEC football away game sport …