2015 Volume 7 Issue 1 Pages 23-38
Although the relationship between a sport team and its fans has been long understood as team identification which is a type of self-team connection, limited attention has been devoted to the idea of communal-team connection (also called fan community identification). This study is one of the first attempts to conceptualize fan community identification and examine its antecedents and consequences. Data were collected from spectators attending professional baseball and soccer games in Japan. The results indicated three points of attachment (sport, player, and local city) were significant precursors of fan community identification. The findings also suggested fan community identification positively influenced team identification. Moreover, the impact of fan community identification on future attendance frequency was stronger for those spectators having a short-term relationship with the team than for those spectators having a long-term relationship. Including fan community identification, the results extended previous research that has focused primarily on team identification.
