Anita M. Moorman

Exploring Origins of Involvement: Understanding the Relationship Between Consumer Motives and Involvement with Professional Sport Teams

Although the involvement construct has received wide spread theoretical and empirical attention over the past 30 years, its application to a subset of leisure such as spectator sport has gone largely ignored. The present research examines both the multidimensionality of the involvement construct and its origins in sport spectator research. A team sport involvement (TSI) model is introduced that accounts for antecedents of motivation, arousal, and interest related to a professional sport team. A series of focus groups and a pilot test were used to develop and refine the Sport Interest Inventory (SII) that measures 18 distinct antecedents of involvement. The SII was next administered to a random sample of season ticket holders and single game attendees of a sport team (N = 1,600). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the psychometric properties of the SII and structural equation modeling analysis supported the TSI model revealing that nine antecedents represented four higher order facets of involvement: Attraction, self-expression, centrality to lifestyle, and risk. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) followed by post hoc comparisons revealed significant differences in prior attendance behavior could be traced to individuals involvement profile score. The results have important implications for applying the TSI model to enhance managers understanding of sport consumers. The application of the TSI model and its implications for enhancing managers understanding of sport consumers are discussed.

Understanding Consumer Support: Extending the Sport Interest Inventory (SII) to Examine Individual Differences among Women's Professional Sport Consumers

The present study used the Sport Interest Inventory (SII) to further our understanding of how motivation can be characterised as individual difference factors among sport consumers. The SII was augmented through qualitative feedback involving four focus groups, a pilot test (n = 80) and later validated on a sample of season ticket holders and single-game attendees (n = 623) of a Womens National Basketball Association franchise in the United States. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and discriminant validity tests provided support for increasing the SII from 14 to 18 unique constructs. Evidence for the application of the SII to a variety of sporting events was observed in that 14 of the 18 factors have already been confirmed and used to examine spectators of mens competitive teams. The application of the SII to womens sport in general was supported in that 18 unique factors have now been confirmed in womens professional soccer and basketball. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to demonstrate one application of the SII and revealed that 10 motivational factors explained 48% of the variance in level of consumer support for the professional sport team. Implications for the use of the SII by sport managers and directions for future research are discussed.

The Impact of Fan Attitudes on Intentions to Watch Professional Basketball Teams on Television

The purpose of this study was to examine conditions impacting fans preference for watching their most disliked team and their favourite team. Previous work found that National Football League fans clearly preferred watching the favourite team, but only preferred watching the disliked team when it was a threat to the favourite. Using the Psychological Commitment to Team (PCT) scale to segment National Basketball Association fans, the current study found both high and low PCT fans preferred watching the disliked team when it was a threat to the favourite team. However, only high PCT fans preferred watching the disliked team when it was likely to lose. Finally, high PCT fans were more likely to watch the favourite team regardless of the conditions, while low PCT fans were significantly less likely to watch the favourite team when it was likely to lose.

The Inclusion of the Paralympics in the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act Legal and Policy Implications for Integration of Athletes with Disabilities into the United States Olympic Committee and National Governing Bodies

The governance of disability sport is a complex and evolving area. In particular, the passage of the Stevens Amendment of 1998 altered the responsibilities of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) in terms of its relationship to disability sport, specifically Paralympic sport. Now the USOC, along with the various national governing bodies (NGBs) and disabled sports organizations (DSOs), is grappling with the implementation of the Stevens Amendment. The policy implications of this legal mandate to be more inclusive of athletes with disabilities are unclear, as Congress did not specify how the act should be implemented. This article provides background information on disability sport governance and presents the legal and policy implications of the Stevens Amendment for the various sport governing bodies.

Legal Issues and the Supervised Internship Relationship: Who is Responsible for What?

ships.-Ed. T i l he value of experiential learning has been well documented in both business and academic journals (Briggs, 2ooO; Cates-McIver, 1998; Crumbley & Sumners, 1998; Haghighi, 1998; Kelsey, 2002; Singer, 2000; Whalen & Barnes, 2001). It easily could be argued that no single step in a sport management career path is as important and valuable as an internship. One need only read the lead article in the SportsBusiness journal’s annual Special Report on Educational Programs to appreciate the importance of internships to sport management students (Kaufmann, 2002). A recent study of United States sport management programs found that 76 percent of the respondents required their students to complete an internship (Williams, 2001). With the growing emphasis on internships, the internship selection and supervision processes become more important as well. Certainly any prestige associated with an internship can positively affect the intern, but more often nowadays interns also evaluate the substance of the internship when making a selection. For example, it is prestigious for students to secure one of the few internship opportunities with professional sport teams. However, if the internship lacks substance and the intern only provides clerical support to the organization, the benefit to the intern is lessened (Gornstein, 1994; Ortner, 1998: Swift & Kent, 1999). An unchallenging internship is likely to be unproductive for both the intern and the sponsoring organization (Swift & Kent). As students, faculty, and the professionals in the industry realize that the best interns seek not only prestigious internships, but ones that are substantive, the role of the internship and the complexity of the internship relationship is changing within university programs. Since more academic programs have added internships and experiential learning to their curriculum, there has been an increased interest in the evaluation component of the internship. This component addresses how the student performed, whether the internship was effective, how the student perceived his or her experience, as well as other factors. Upon examining the curricular aspects of the internship, many people have concluded that more substantive assignments and increased curricular requirements are necessary in order to provide an internship experience with consistent standards and outcomes (Ross & Elechi, 2002; Somerick, 2001). There are two published texts that guide sport management programs on how to manage internships (Ashley & Dollar, 20o0; Cuneen & Sidwell, 1994). Both of these texts provide numerous recommendations for locating internships, supervising intern-