Impact of Spectators’ Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility on Regional Attachment in Sports: Three-Wave Indirect Effects of Spectators’ Pride and Team Identification

Farman Ullah, Yigang Wu, Khalid Mehmood, Fauzia Jabeen, Yaser Iftikhar, Ángel Acevedo-Duque and Ho Kwong Kwan
Additional contact information
Farman Ullah: School of Physical Education, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai 200438, China
Yigang Wu: School of Physical Education, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai 200438, China
Khalid Mehmood: School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Fauzia Jabeen: College of Business, Abu Dhabi University, Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 59911, UAE
Yaser Iftikhar: Department of Business Administration, Iqra University, Karachi 75500, Pakistan
Ángel Acevedo-Duque: Faculty of Business and Administration, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Santiago 7500912, Chile
Ho Kwong Kwan: Department of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai 201206, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-14

Abstract: The professional sports events industry is becoming immensely popular due to a global social shift toward larger numbers of spectators at sports events and an ever-increasing variety of such events. This study aimed to investigate the impact of spectators’ perception of corporate social responsibility on regional attachment by applying social identity theory. The present study introduces two mediators, namely, spectators’ pride and team identification, to enlighten the relationship between spectators’ perception of corporate social responsibility and regional attachment, thus contributing to the literature on corporate social responsibility in sports. This quantitative study used a time-lagged approach to collect data in three waves at a time interval of one week and the final sample consisted of 511 respondents (i.e., spectators). Hierarchical regression analysis bootstrapping approach was utilized to analyze the hypothesis. We found that the spectators’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility positively influenced their team identification, and this relationship was mediated by spectators’ pride. In addition, spectators’ pride positively influences regional attachment, and this relationship is mediated by team identification. These findings provide new directions for understanding corporate social responsibility, team identification, spectators’ pride, and regional attachment in sports contexts. The practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Keywords: spectators’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility; spectators’ pride; team identification; regional attachment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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