Scheduled for Research Consortium Poster Session: Thematic Sport Posters, Thursday, March 15, 2007, 12:45 PM - 2:15 PM, Convention Center: Exhibit Hall Poster Area I


Relationships of Three Components of Psychological Commitment to Resistance to Changing Team Allegiance

Jaehyun Ha1, Jongback Kim2 and Chanho Park2, (1)The College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY, (2)Dong-Eui University, Pusan, South Korea

Funk, Haugtvedt, and Howard (2000), and Krosnick and Petty (1995) suggested ideas for measuring psychological commitment based on the concept of attitude strength. They suggested that a better understanding of the concept of attitude strength might provide insight into three components of psychological commitment (i.e., cognitive structure, subjective beliefs, attitude valence) and primary evidence (resistance to change) of psychological commitment. These ideas provided a direction for conceptualizing and measuring the factors believed to comprise psychological commitment to a sports team. Therefore, this study was to gain a better understanding of three components of psychological commitment to a sports team based on the concept of attitude strength and to examine the causal relationships of three components of psychological commitment to resistance to changing team allegiance. The pilot data (n=191) were analyzed using (1) Cronbach's ƒÑ, (2) item-to-total correlation, (3) item-to-item correlation, and (4) exploratory factor analysis. The results of these analyses were used as the criteria for eliminating poorly performing items. Based upon the results of the pilot study, accessibility dimension and personal relevance dimension were dropped. The dimension of direct experience was deleted during the descriptive analysis of the main study (n=251) because of the violation of normal distribution for Structural Equation Modeling. The measurement models were estimated through confirmatory factor analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis for the measurement model demonstrated satisfactory model fit to the data (£q2 [168] = 273.517, p < .05, £q2/df = 1.628, GFI = 0.906, CFI = 0.97, and RMSEA = 0.05), with 168 degrees of freedom. The measurement model for three components of psychological commitment represented a hierarchical structure of a second-order factor model. In order to effectively test the hierarchical factor structure, confirmatory factor analysis with the partial disaggregation technique is recommended (Bagozzi & Heatherton, 1994). The results indicated that the model fit yielded a satisfactory within recommended thresholds to the sample data (£q2 [24] = 40.317, p < .05, £q2/df = 1.68, GFI = 0.97, CFI = 0.99, and RMSEA = 0.052). The results of structural model indicated satisfactory model fit to the sample data (£q2 [50] = 130.632, p < .05, £q2/df = 2.61, GFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.97, and RMSEA = 0.080). The results revealed that three components positively contribute to psychological commitment to a sports team as well as resistance to changing team allegiance was directly influenced by psychological commitment to a sports team.
Keyword(s): research, sport management, sport topics

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