Authors
Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Faculty of Physical Education, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran
Abstract
Objective: The current study was conducted with the aim of the effect of love of sport on the loyalty of sport fans with the mediating role of emotional experiences.
Methodology: The research method was descriptive-correlation and cross-sectional in terms of time. The statistical population included fans of volleyball, basketball, horse riding, and football sports teams of Golestan province, and 285 people were selected by convenience sampling with calculating at least 2 and at most 10 times the number of questions. Data collection tools were standard questionnaires: The Love of Sport by Bang et al. (2008), The Loyalty of fans by Abolhasani (2015), and Emotional Experiences by Prayag et al. (2013). The content validity of the questionnaires wereconfirmed from the opinions of 10 sports management professors and construct validity using model fit indexes. Cronbach's alpha method and composite reliability were also used to calculate reliability. Data analysis by structural equation model in Smart PLS software was done.
Results: The results showed love of sport has positive and significant effect on the loyalty of sports fans and emotional experiences. In addition, emotional experiences had a positive and significant effect on the loyalty of sports fans. Also, the results showed that emotional experiences play a mediating role in the relationship between the love of sport and the loyalty of sports fans.
Conclusion: Therefore, based on the results of the research, it can be said, by increasing positive emotional experiences and increasing people's love of sport, their loyalty to sports teams can be improved.
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