Fan Agency, Social Modeling of Stadium, and Behavioral Engagement: A Perspective on Building Participatory Fan Culture and Community

Abstract

One of the essential tasks of sport teams and marketers is building and maintaining supportive fan culture or community. These are crucial elements of non-monetary and monetary outcomes pertaining to a sport team, including value creation, attendance, sponsorship, etc. Existing studies have recognized the importance of participatory culture and community engagements in teams’ prosperity. However, little research has addressed antecedents of participatory and community engagements, preventing a comprehensive understanding of sport fans' psychological processes explaining the antecedents of participatory fan culture and community building.

This study adopted an agentic perspective and a social modeling approach from social cognitive theory to understand sport fans' psychological mechanisms of behavior engagement. Specifically, the aim of this present study was to (a) examine fan agency and its efficacy beliefs as antecedent factors of building participatory fan culture and community and (b) investigate the role of stadiums in amplifying fans' efficacies and building participatory fan culture and community. A cross-sectional survey and a posttest online experiment were conducted. Through a cross-sectional survey study, this study attempted to provide the validity and reliability of measurement items as well as the preliminary supporting evidence of the suggested theoretical model. Through a posttest online experiment, this study evaluated the causal relationship suggested in the theoretical model.

The findings suggest that sport fans' efficacy beliefs (i.e., proxy efficacy, collective efficacy, and both proxy and collective efficacy together) play an important role in building a participatory fan culture and community directly or via their stadium experiences. Further, this study found that utilizing social media postings can be an effective way to increase a sport fan's efficacy beliefs and build a participatory fan culture and community. This study makes several contributions to current literature in the areas of social cognitive theory, sport fan behavior, and stadium management. Even more, the findings of this study provide practitioners with a number of practical insights into how to get their fans involved in a team and fan community.