Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been introduced as a new way of analyzing and predicting sport consumer behavior. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationships among the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, the importance of exercise, attitudes towards use, and the behavioral intention to use AI services based on the technology adoption model. The authors recruited 408 participants who participated in an experiment designed to provide a deeper understanding of AI fitness services. After screening, the collected data were screened through assumption tests, and we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to analyze research hypotheses. The results indicated that three types of consumer evaluations (i.e., perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and importance of exercise) positively influence their attitudes toward AI fitness services. In addition, the positive attitudes regarding AI services positively influenced the intention to use AI services. The results of this research contribute to our knowledge of the consumers’ attitudes and behaviors toward AI services in the sport industry based on the technology acceptance model. Furthermore, this study provided the empirical evidence critically needed to increase our understanding of AI in the sport industry and offered new insights into how sport facility managers can predict their consumers’ intention to use AI services.
In a college athletics setting, we investigated a moderated mediation model of the effect of team identification on attendance intention where student involvement was the mediator and agreeableness was the moderator. Results showed that student involvement mediated the relationship between team identification and attendance intention, and agreeableness moderated the effect of student involvement on attendance intention. In particular, the interaction effect by agreeableness indicated how less agreeable students would be more willing to attend games when they are more involved in campus activities. Details of this study, including theoretical and practical implications, research limitations, and future directions, are discussed.
How can corporate social responsibility initiatives influence brand love? Based on the theory of social identity complexity, we examined whether greater complexity of a sport fan’s multiple identifications with sport leagues led to higher multicultural tolerance and more positive perceptions of leagues’ corporate social responsibility activities. Further, brand authenticity was tested as a variable intervening between perceived corporate social responsibility and brand love. We analyzed this serial mediation effect impacting sport fans’ brand love for their multiple, favored and less favored, sport leagues. Participants (N = 242 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers) answered the scale item questionnaire for model assessment. The hypothesized model was supported as the indirect effect through all mediators was significant (43.42% of total indirect effects). Our results suggest that when sport fans acknowledge a high overlap among league fan groups (low social identity complexity), their tolerance is more likely to be higher than those who have a low overlap. Such high levels of tolerance influence how fans perceive corporate social responsibility initiatives, and these effects build up for fans to perceive the brand to be more authentic (i.e., based on their continuity, credibility, integrity, and symbolism). These antecedents affected brand love through a serial mediation. Sport league managers should consider the diverse aspects across leagues (i.e., different fan characteristics, media operations, game schedules) for harmonious coexistence with other leagues (e.g., by collaborating on promotions and reducing overlap of schedules) and maintain brand authenticity for their social initiatives to result in a greater brand love in the consumer’s mind.
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