Sport Spectator Involvement of Professional Women's Basketball

Purpose

There is a clear indication that women's sports have been recognized as a significant market segment that has unique characteristics such as fan base, spectator involvement, and intense fan identification (James & Ridinger, 2002). Although the concept of sport spectator involvement has been identified as an essential predictor in measuring sport consumption behavior (Capella, 2001), little research has been done to understand the importance of sport spectator behavior in women's sports. The purpose of this study was to investigate sport spectator behavior in women's sports. Specifically, we examined the level of sport spectator involvement with two aspects of consumer behavior (psychological and behavioral involvements), and external factors that most influence spectator decision-making processes regarding attending women's sports.

Methods

A total of 281 spectators from the 2007 WNBA games in the Eastern Conference participated to the study. The modified Sport Spectator Involvement questionnaire (Kim, 2005) was administered during the basketball games. A series of t-test were performed to exam differences of spectator involvement level with respect to the socio-demographics of the sport spectators. A multiple regression analysis was employed to investigate the influential factors affecting the level of spectator involvement.

Analysis/Results

The descriptive statistics indicated that spectators at the WNBA games had higher behavioral involvement (M = 4.71, SD = 1.26) than psychological involvement (M = 4.26, SD = 1.51). Overall level of sport spectator involvement (M = 4.48, SD = 1.34) at the WNBA games were moderate high. After controlling gender, age, and status on involvement, a multiple regression model showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between involvement factors and spectator's involvement level (F (7, 274) = 81.394, R2 =.676, p <.01). Fan identification (ß = .548, t = 9.01, p < .01) showed the most influence, followed by involvement opportunity (ß = .242, t = 3.49, p < .01) and perceived value (ß = -.122, t = -2.16, p < .05), respectively.

Conclusions

The findings of the study revealed that encouraging direct participation by providing direct information about ticket price, event location, and accessibility and stimulating enthusiastic cheering actions within the stadiums or arenas, may increase the level of sport spectator involvement. Furthermore, behavioral involvement could be considered as a meaningful factor to predict consumer behaviors more accurately.