抄録
This study focused on an interactive online viewing service that allows participants to communicate with each other. Drawing on social presence, social identity theory, self-categorization theory, and brand community research, the study aimed to clarify the influence of fan community ID with team support intentions. Fan community ID is the sense of camaraderie that sports fans form with other fans and is thought to be influenced by the presence of fans online (Nakazawa and Yoshida, 2015). Therefore, social presence (recognizing others in communication media as “real” people) was considered as an antecedent factor of fan community ID. Furthermore, because group membership, or the recognition of belonging to a fan community, is thought to have a positive influence on team support intentions, merchandise purchase intentions and gifting intentions were set as outcome factors of fan community ID. Analysis of the hypothesized model using data collected from users of an interactive viewing service for Japanese professional baseball games indicated a positive influence from social presence on fan community ID and a positive influence from fan community ID on merchandise purchase intentions and gifting intentions.
