An Exploration Of Factors Associated With Sport Fan's' Choice Of Ticketing Platforms., Jacob Owsley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research study examined key experiential and demographic factors associated with sport consumers’ choice of online ticketing platforms. The research applied the technology acceptance model (TAM) to examine how trust, official sponsorship, user interface design, and price consciousness are associated with consumers’ choice between different online ticketing platforms.. Data were collected from 312 adult sport consumers in the United States through an online survey distributed across six Reddit communities focused on ticketing or research activities. Participants included individuals who bought tickets to professional sports events and attended these events during the last 12 months. The expert review process and two …

Engaging In Movement At Work: Exploring Engagement And Physical Activity., Spencer A. Cavan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High levels of employee engagement provide organizations competitive advantages such as increased customer satisfaction, profits, and employee productivity. Despite potential benefits, the number of engaged employees is declining and organizations need to find innovative ways to enhance engagement. Emerging evidence suggests workplace physical activity may generate organizational benefits extending beyond health improvement. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate perceptions of engagement among employees participating in a physical activity intervention at work. A qualitative design, guided by phenomenology, examined perceptions of workplace physical activity and perceived levels of engagement, as well as constraints related to involvement among university …

A Phenomenological Study Of The Lack Of Preparedness Of Recent Graduates In Sports Management Businesses In The Northeastern United States, Daria M. Mickowski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to facilitate a better understanding of the competitive nature of private sports management businesses that provide coaches and sports programming for school systems and townships. The problem investigated by the study involved how the significant lack of preparedness of recent sports management/education graduates in the northeastern United States impacts professional development and the ability of organizations to compete, reduce undesirable turnover, and retain talent. The purpose of the study was to understand why recent sports management/education graduates were unprepared in three critical areas: leadership capability, managing interpersonal conflict, and effectiveness in working on diverse teams. A qualitative …

"Men Hunt, Women Gather." Perceptions Of Gender And Leadership In Outdoor Recreation In A Higher Education Setting, Elizabeth Marie Johansen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation delved into the complex interaction between gender dynamics and leadership perceptions within outdoor recreation, particularly in the context of higher education. Utilizing Transformational Learning Theory, Critical Feminist Theory, and Conditional Outdoor Leadership Theory, this study aimed to uncover the nuanced ways in which gender influenced perceptions of leadership roles and behaviors in outdoor recreation activities based on participant’s experiences. This study utilized an explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design, which included a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews to gain a more holistic understanding of participants' perceptions and experiences.

Findings suggest that despite progress towards gender equality in outdoor recreation …

The Influence Of Sponsorship Engagement On Brand Loyalty: An Analysis Of The On-Site And Social Media Activational Communications., Achyut Kulkarni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of sponsorship engagement (enacted via sponsorship activations) on consumers’ responses to sponsors’ activational communications. Specifically, this study aimed at examining if interaction and engagement with their team’s sponsors’ activational communication on-site, as well as on social media, influenced loyalty towards the sponsors. The study utilized service-dominant (S-D) logic as the theoretical framework. The S-D logic perspective recognizes that consumer behavior is centered on the interactive experiences between a consumer and an object, in this case the sponsor, and that a level of consumer interest and/or personal relevance with respect to …

The Person Behind The Team: A Phenomenological Exploration Of The Role Of The Sport Supervisor In Ncaa Division I Intercollegiate Athletics., Ehren R. Green

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As organizational connectors, athletic administrators who serve as sport supervisors, are integral to the success of intercollegiate athletic departments. However, little is known about the role of sport supervisor or the relationship between sport supervisors and head coaches. Thus, this study seeks to define and better understand the role of the sport supervisor in intercollegiate athletics and explore the relationship between the sport supervisor and the head coach. Through a descriptive phenomenological approach, 22 participants (11 sport supervisors and 11 head coaches) from NCAA Division I institutions were interviewed. Role theory guided the defining of the role while leader-member exchange …

The Role Of Organizational Culture And Relationship Marketing In Disability Sport Sponsorship: An Exemplar Case Study., Nina Siegfried

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Worldwide, disability sport faces funding challenges. Sponsorship offers a viable alternative to combat the lack of sustainable funding in disability sport. Exploring how organizational culture can be leveraged to increase strategic partnerships, the purposes of this multiple manuscript dissertation were to (a) examine the elements of the organizational culture that make a successful international wheelchair basketball sport club attractive to external partners and (b) determine what role those organizational cultural elements play in leveraging relationship marketing (RM) for sponsorship acquisition and retention. Utilizing an exemplar case study methodology, the focus of this study was the RSV Lahn-Dill, an international wheelchair …

The Role Of Year-Round Fan Engagement: A New Approach To Sport Fan Behavior, Han Soo Kim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fan engagement, the substantial psychological connectedness to a specific club, team, or sport itself, is in a state of rapid transformation due to the growth of digital media. For sport organizations, managing fan engagement throughout the year is important to maximizing team revenues and sponsors’ interests. While fans consume sports differently depending on the season, the focus has been primarily on fan behavior during the in-season in the sport management literature. Thus, the purposes of this study were to (1) provide a conceptual framework of year-round fan engagement by applying the season distinction approach, (2) establish the scale of off-season …

Kids These Days: Corporate Social Responsibility And Generational Influence On Consumer Intention, Maya Mathis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Millennials are known for being a unique generation that places a high value on improving their community. They are also unlike any other generation because they are harder to market to since they are more aware of common marketing strategies used by companies today. Millennials want to improve the community and expect others to do the same. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a popular topic and has gained momentum in research over the years; understanding the relationship between CSR and millennials is important due to the generational shifts. Therefore, this study examines the importance of CSR to different generations and …

"It's Personal": A Case Study Analysis Of The Strategic Management Of Resources In A Historically Black University Athletic Department., Brigitte M. Burpo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a qualitative case study examination of the strategic management of critical resources in an HBCU athletic program. It begins with a historical overview of HBCUs and HBCU athletic departments focusing on the systemic and societal influences that contributed to the current state of HBCU athletic programs. This dissertation later discusses the influence of a lack of financial resources on HBCU athletic departments further depletes the ability to operate with a competitive advantage. Chapter One focuses on the historic background of HBCUs and their formation as well as the societal influences that depleted critical resources. Chapter Two covers …

Exploring The Relationships Between Collegiate Sport Coaches’ Creative Productivity And Factors Of Creative Potential, Sean Flanders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sport coaches are perceived as problem solvers who engage in creativity to handle the spontaneity of competitive activity and generate winning results. However, while creativity in athletes has been researched, little has been investigated regarding coaches. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine different aspects of creativity – person, process, press, and product – among collegiate team sport coaches in the United States. Specifically, how personality traits, ideational fluency, remote association ability, years of coaching experience, and work climate related to creative product impact and frequency. A modified creativity personality test was found to be positively …

College Student Engagement On Campus: Attending Collegiate Sports Events, Nur Islamiah Mohamad Fuad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While attending collegiate sports events is part of the college experience, especially in the United States, there is a decline in students’ attendance at collegiate sports events shown in the past years. The purpose of this study is to (1) investigate college students' experience in attending collegiate sports events, (2) identify college students’ motivations and constraints in attending collegiate sports events, and (3) recognize possible strategies to improve collegiate sports events attendance and engagement on college campuses. A qualitative research approach, focus group, was used to facilitate discussion and interaction with a group of students sharing their experiences and perspectives …

A Better Predictor Of Nfl Success: Collegiate Performance Or The Nfl Draft Combine?, Michael Gallagher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

NFL teams spend massive sums to ensure they are prepared for the future, but how should they determine whom that future includes? This study set out to find what predicts NFL success more accurately – collegiate in-game performance or the NFL Draft Combine. In the sample of 2007-2012 first-round picks, 191 athletes were measured in three NFL Draft Combine drills, two physical components, and a varying amount of ingame collegiate and NFL performance statistical categories, dependent on position. Secondarily, this work examined Power 5 and non-Power 5 players to determine if attending a more prolific program was predictive of NFL …

Basketball Officials' Training And Development: Links To Retention, Nathan Ferdinand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The sharp decline in retention from year-to-year among sport officials is considered a “crisis” among the officiating community and research has attempted to explore the issue by identifying factors that impact retention (Warner et al. 2013). The seven-factor “Referee Retention Scale” (RRS) seeks to predict the likelihood of retention for officials one factor being officials’ ratings of their continuing education (Ridinger et al. 2017). However there is a lack of study for examining the relationships among methods and outcomes of training continuing education and referee retention across sporting contexts. A cross-sectional design was created using an online survey which combined …

The Impact Of Alcohol Consumption On Academic Success And Athletic Identity In Collegiate Student-Athletes, Zoe E. Arnold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Upon entering college in the United States, students are exposed to alcohol and, relatedly, the potentially dangerous experiences and effects that come with consuming alcohol. This is especially true for collegiate student-athletes, who have been found to have the highest consumption rate among student groups on campus. The purpose of the study was to understand the relationship between how student-athletes at a focus university, a Division I member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, experience alcohol consumption, how their consumption affects their academic grade point average (GPA), and how athletic identity plays a role in their experiences. While the research …

African American Student-Athletes: Factors Influencing Choice Of Graduate School, Tanner Feterl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although support systems are in place for student-athletes, African Americans remain underrepresented in careers requiring a graduate education, including intercollegiate athletic departments (Okahana, Feaster, & Allum, 2016). The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the factors influencing an NCAA Mid-major, Division I African American student-athletes’ choice of pursuing graduate school. Researchers identified themes utilizing Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Student Involvement Theory frameworks to explain the influencing factors. The participants consisted of nine African American sophomore, junior, and senior student-athletes who participated in different sports and were chosen using purpose sampling. Each participant took part in an …

The Impact Of The Gender Of The Coach On The Type Of Motivational Climate That Is Established On A College Athletics Team, Zola Pieterse

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to investigate the connection between the gender of the coach and the perceived motivational climate that is established on a college sports team. Eighty-eight athletes completed the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire (PMCSQ-2) to assess their perceptions of the motivational climate that is established on a college sports team. The study further investigated the influence of the gender of the athlete, as well as the athlete's preference for either an Ego-oriented or Task-oriented motivational climate. No statistically significant correlation were found between the gender of the coach, the gender of the athlete, and …

An Examination Of Box Office Relationship Quality And Relationship Selling In Division I College Athletics., James F. Weiner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

College athletics departments have experienced unprecedented growth. However, expenses have risen even faster (Fulks, 2016), and university athletics departments have relied on increased subsidies from host institutions and donations to make ends meet (Fulks, 2016). The root cause behind much of the revenue increases have been credited to large multimedia and broadcast contracts, which guarantee substantial income for decade-long terms (Sherman, 2016). Such agreements leave little room for individual growth, leaving ticket sales as one of the few controllable revenues to which a school could manipulate their own bottom line and increase profitability. Further investigation into box office sales trends …

College Wheelchair Basketball Players' Construction Of Identities: A Symbolic Interactionism Approach, Alison Hovatter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The National Wheelchair Basketball Association consists of 14 collegiate teams (NCAA, 2013) that are represented at both the NCAA and club sport arenas. Collegiate wheelchair basketball student-athletes have been neglected within the sport discussion due to the sports emergence status in legitimacy with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) standards (Berger, 2004, 2008; Larkin, Cottingham & Pate, 2014; Shogan, 1999), and its perception of being a charity sport, where bodies that have disabilities do not play "natural body" sports (Berger, 2008). By using the collegiate environment to further study wheelchair basketball players, a deeper understanding of identity negotiation of student-athletes …

Marginal Revenue Product Of Division I Swimmers, Olivia Adele Raxter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To date, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has undergone an excessive amount of reforms including topics such as student-athlete well-being, academics, enforcement, resource allocation, and so forth. However, despite the constant stream of policy reforms there has been a significant lack of effective reform initiatives with reference to the economic state of the NCAA. This void is partially due to the lack of sufficient empirical evidence surrounding the economic discussion of college athletics, specifically in regards to the discussion of the potential for performance based compensation for student-athletes. Past research for such compensation has focused primarily on large revenue …

The Impact Of Chinese Air Pollution On Match Attendance Of Chinese Super League, Wantong Fu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To date, environmental issues have become one of the most complex social and economic issues across the globe. Specifically, in the context of sport, the literature has considered how sport organizations may use environmental concerns as a way to connect to consumers, such as through the use of environmentally practices to help build the image of sport organizations. However, despite this lineage of studies, research which has focused on how changing environmental conditions may influence sport consumers are virtually non-existent. Such research is especially important in the case of China, where due to the rapid growth of urban areas and …

Developing Computer Vision Technology To Automate Pitch Analysis In Baseball., Mahdi Moalla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lokator is a baseball training system designed to document pitch location while teaching pitch command, selection and sequencing. It is composed of a pitching target and a smartphone app. The target is divided into a set of zones to identify the pitch location. The main limitation of the current system is its reliance on the user's feedback. After each throw, the pitcher or the coach needs to identify and report the target's zone that was hit by the ball by just relying on the naked eye. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the possibility of using computer vision …

Evaluating Minor League Baseball Social Identity, Social Image, And Brand Equity., Christan David Hanna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An understanding of brand equity, the value a brand adds to a product (Keller, 1993), can provide valuable information to sport managers. This is due to the fact price elasticity, competitive strength, and brand loyalty are consequences of brand equity (Keller, 2001). The degree to which fans identify with teams has been found to predict brand equity in major professional sport (Boyle & Magnusson, 2007) and major college sport (Watkins, 2014) contexts. One purpose of this study is to assess whether fan identification is predictive of brand equity in a MiLB context. Further, Lassar, Mittal, and Sharma (1995) found social …

An Investigation Of Virtual Golf In The Republic Of Korea From A Marketing Perspective., Chulhwan Choi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Just as advances in technology have drastically changed daily life, the entire sport business industry has been altered by the latest technology (Lee, Cheon, Judge, Shin, & Kim, 2012). A virtual sport, called "screen golf", has offered a virtual reality via simulators and has seen enormous growth in the Republic of Korea (Kim, Seo, Kim, & Chang, 2014), not just as an alternative to the existing sport but as an entirely new type of sport entertainment (Han, Beak, Lee, & Huh, 2014). Knowing that there are significant gaps in consumer behaviors between existing sports and emerging sports (Ko, Park, & …

Donor Motivation To Ncaa Division I Football Bowl Subdivision Athletic Departments, Daniel White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effects Promotional Incentives Have On College Basketball Attendance In Power Five Conferences, Alexander Ryan Cramer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore promotional incentives effects on attendance at men and women college basketball games in Power Five conferences during the 2015-16 season. The sub-objective was to explore the data to determine if distinct market segments emerged based on the promotional strategies measured as part of the study. The study variables are based on recommendations and suggestions from completed research exploring similar phenomenon among MLB teams (Boyd & Krehbiel, 2003, Boyd & Krehbiel 2006, Browning & Debolt, 2007, Howell, Klenosky, McEvoy, 2015). There were 20 men and 20 women teams from Power Five conference with …

The Dilemma: Career Transition Of African American Male Football Players At Division I Institutions, Kellen Jamil Northcutt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore and understand perceptions of African American male football athletes at Division I institutions that also played professional football, regarding their collegiate experiences and transition from athletics to post-playing careers. The study examined issues of race and social interaction, academic preparation, economic status, leadership opportunities, and the transitions from collegiate and professional sports. The participants in this study consisted of six former NFL players who attended college and played collegiately at NCAA predominately white Division I institutions in the Southern Regional Education Board member states in the United States. Using qualitative …

An Investigation Of Scholar-Baller And Non Scholar-Baller Division I Football Student-Athletes' Academic, Athletic, Intrinsic Motivation And Athletic Identity, Janet Rasmussen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As less than 3 % of student-athletes go on to play sport professionally, it is important that they are prepared for careers outside of athletics (Susanj & Stewart, 2005). Many football student-athletes have low grade point averages and graduation rates. Universities incorporate academic motivational programs to help combat low academic performance. One unique program, Scholar-Baller, utilizes popular culture within its curriculum to bridge the gap between academics and athletics. This dissertation examined the differences between Scholar-Baller and Non Scholar-Baller Division I football student-athletes' motivation (academic, athletic, intrinsic) and athletic identity using expectancy-value theory and self-affirmation theory as its framework. In …