Major Sport Events and Psychic Income: The Social Anchor Effect

Spectator Sport and Population Health: A Consultation with U.S. College Athletics Employees

“…Of these themes, our review of recent sport management studies as reported in Table 2 revealed that an increasing number of the studies have addressed the themes of the psychological impact of sport spectatorship. In contrast, there is a lack of research to specifically investigate the social psychological benefits of sport spectatorship-a research theme rated as the most important by the respondents of this consultation exercise-with only two studies (Collins & Heere, 2018;Oja, Wear, & Clopton, 2018) identified by our review addressing this theme.…”

Other- versus Self-Referenced Social Impacts of Events: Validating a New Scale

“…Social Identity Theory (SIT) refers to values and emotional attachment associated with memberships in a particular group (i.e., connection and involvement; [35,36]). Social Anchor Theory (SAT) is used to explain psychological benefits that are sustained among group members after experiencing an event, and consists of social capital and social identity [37]. While different authors define social capital in different ways (e.g., [38]), in the context of events, social capital reflects how the event affects the residents and their relationship to the community [33].…”

“…Community spirit, the one common dimension across all studies presented in Table 1, refers to feelings of pride and happiness instilled by an event. Some authors call it psychic income (e.g., [33,37]), or a psychological "feel-good-factor" [45]. Social cohesion represents people's perceptions as to how an event affects connectedness between individuals in the community [42,43], while social capital reflects how the event affects the residents and their relationship to the community (e.g., [33,38]).…”

“…When using SR questions in different time periods, there is more variation in pre-and post-event results [33,35,37,45]. For example, Kavetsos and Szymanski [45] studied the feel-good effect one year before, during, and three months after the 2006 FIFA World Cup, using a four-scale SR question: "On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the life you lead?"…”

“…The authors found the same SR score for two other social capital dimensions (i.e., trust and safety, and value of life). In their study on the 2012 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, held in Kansas City (MO), Oja and colleagues [37] found some SR increased post-event (e.g., social capital: "Interacting with Kansas Citians makes me want to try new things"), others decreased (e.g., Neighborhood identification: "I am very interested in what others think about Kansas City"). Given this wide variation in higher, lower, or the same scores for SR items, there is no ground to posit that SR items underestimate social impact.…”