Managerial Factors Affecting Team Identification

The current study is based on a review of Underwood, Bond, and Baer (2001) and Sutton, McDonald, Milne, and Cimperman (1997), which provide basic concepts of managerial factors affecting team identification. It is proposed that managerial factors can be susceptible to manipulation by managers in order to create and sustain fans' identification with a professional sport team. This study is first attempt to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework of managerial factors and to conduct an empirical analysis. The conceptual model of managerial factors affecting team identification proposed that the managerial factors were represented by twelve sub-dimensions, categorized into five primary dimensions: (1) organization, (2) attractive, (3) affiliation, (4) media, and (5) tradition. The purpose of the present study is to test whether managerial factors may indeed foster team identification. More specifically, the aim of the study is to develop a valid and reliable scale to measure managerial factors. Data were collected from college students of a large, public university located in the southeastern region of the United States (N= 578); confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed on a split sample (Sample1= 289, Sample 2= 289) to examine five constructs of managerial factors. Based on the results of empirical tests, five managerial factors (organization, performance, affiliation, media, and tradition) with nine sub-dimensions emerged from the analysis and showed a good fit of the model. The analysis of the study evidences that reliability and validity were provided for the measurement. The analysis of structural model indicated that team identification was directly influenced by managerial factors. The findings of this study have contributions to not only an extension of the knowledge of team identification to the area of sport fans research, but also to practical applications for practitioners in sport industry.