An Internet-based survey was posted on the Twitter feeds and Facebook pages of 1 predominantly social and 1 predominantly parasocial athlete to ascertain the similarities and differences between their follower sets in terms of parasocial interaction development and follower motivations. Analysis of the data revealed a sense of heightened interpersonal closeness based on the interaction style of the athlete. While followers of the social athlete were driven by interpersonal constructs, followers of the parasocial athlete relied more on media conventions in their interaction patterns. To understand follower motivations, exploratory factor analyses were conducted for both follower sets. For followers of the social athlete, most of the interactivity, information-gathering, personality, and entertainment items loaded together. Unlike followers of the social athlete, fanship and community items loaded alongside information-gathering items for followers of the parasocial athlete. The implications of these and other findings are discussed further.
The current study employs the hedonic paradigm model (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982) to investigate the interceding function of emotions on the relationship between personality (i.e., risk taking) and attitude toward mixed martial arts. This study also examines sport-media (e.g., television) consumption of a nontraditional sport. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the proposed model incorporating risk taking, pleasure, arousal, attitude, and actual consumption behavior. The study found a significant mediation effect of emotion (pleasure and arousal) in the relationship between risk taking and attitude. In addition, attitude showed a direct and significant influence on actual media-consumption behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed, along with future directions for research.
The purpose of this study is to propose a conceptual model for investigating the antecedents and consequences of winning expectancy in the fantasy sport consumption context. Employing the illusion of control theory as a conceptual framework, the study hypothesized that perceived football knowledge, perceived ease of use the service Website, and enjoyment as predictors of winning expectancy and time and money involvement as consequences. The proposed model is tested using a convenience sample (N = 244) of college students and the SEM results supported all hypotheses. Further, the proposed model was more parsimonious and performed better than the competing model.
While the impact of sexual harassment in the workplace has been well documented, little sexual harassment research has been conducted focusing on the women who work in the sport industry. This study explored the extent to which female sport print media professionals (i.e., sports editors, sportswriters, sports columnists) were subjected to sexually harassing behaviors in the workplace. Of the women who participated in the study (N= 112), over half of the participants indicated that they had encountered some form of sexual harassment over the 12 months before participating in the study. The perpetrators included their immediate supervisors, coworkers, members of the sport media, athletes, and employees of sport organizations. The study also identified the forms of sexual harassment encountered and attitudes toward harassment in the workplace. Suggestions on how to prevent harassment toward women in the sport industry are discussed.
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