A distance-running event and life satisfaction: The mediating roles of involvement

Mikihiro Sato, Jeremy S. Jordan and Daniel C. Funk

Sport Management Review, 2016, vol. 19, issue 5, 536-549

Abstract: The increasing popularity of mass participant sport events has provided sport event managers and scholars with an opportunity to contribute to a broader conversation on ways to promote population health. Theoretically, these managed sport services should have the capacity to enhance event participants’ well-being; however, the empirical link between event participation and well-being remains inconclusive. By comparing individuals who participated in a distance-running event with individuals who did not participate in the event, this study examined the contributions of the distance-running event, behavioural loyalty, and psychological involvement to life satisfaction, an indicator of mental health and well-being. Participants (N=742) were recruited from a 10-mile running event held in the United States. The results revealed that participation in a distance-running event was positively associated with weekly running activity, an indicator of behavioural loyalty. In addition, the two facets of psychological involvement in running—pleasure and sign—mediated the relationship between weekly running activity and life satisfaction. These findings provide empirical support that distance-running events can serve as environmental correlates of participants’ behavioural loyalty and that the contribution of behavioural loyalty to life satisfaction lies in whether event participants identify pleasant and symbolic aspects of the activity.

Keywords: Physically active leisure; Bottom-up theory; Mental health; Well-being; Sport events (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1441352316300031
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:spomar:v:19:y:2016:i:5:p:536-549

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/716936/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 716936/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.smr.2016.04.001

Access Statistics for this article

Sport Management Review is currently edited by Tracy Taylor

More articles in Sport Management Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().