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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Fandom, Team Loyalty, and the Extended Self: A Study of Football Fans in Brazil and France

Résumé

Sports play a pivotal role in contemporary societies. Giulianotti (2007, p. 260) described football as an “increasingly important popular cultural field for identity construction.” This research investigated similarities and differences between Brazilian and French football fans, seeking a better understanding of the factors associated to football fandom. The study adopted as theoretical perspective the Extended Self theory and was also rooted on the literature on sports fandom. The choice of these two countries was due to their football culture. The football history is similar, it is developed at the same time but with different fans behaviors. The French are more critical, while the Brazilians are more passionate. The literature review examined the Extended Self perspective, fans' attitudes and behavior, and football consumption. A theoretical framework was extracted from the literature and 12 hypotheses were advanced, concerning (i) antecedents of emotional attachment to the team and team identification; (ii) affective and cognitive factors that lead to engagement with a team; (iii) incorporation of a team to the self; (iv) behavioral consequences (team loyalty), in addition to a moderating variable (nationality). The Extended Self scale refers to identity, connecting the concepts of consumer identity and incorporation of the possession to the self. According to Lock and Heere (2017) it is necessary to distinguish more precisely between the constructs of fan identity and team identification Thus, the present study responds to a claim by these authors. The study uses an online survey and a sample of football fans in Brazil and France. Respondents were over 18 years old and support a football team. The applied questionnaire used scales extracted from the literature to measure the key constructs. Family Influence and Friends' Influence were measured by scales used by Funk et al. (2003), Online Media Influence measured by Phua (2010). Attitudes toward the Team were measured using the Emotional Attachment Scale of Jimenez & Voss (2014). Bauer et al.’s (2008) scale was used in Team Identification and Team Loyalty. Lastly, the Team's Incorporation into the Self, uses an adaptation of the original Sivadas and Venkatesh (1995) scale. A total of 807 questionnaires were answered, 542 by Brazilian fans and 265 by French fans. Some had to be excluded because they were incomplete, or the respondents’ profile did not fit the target population. Therefore, resulting of 307 Brazilian and 169 French questionnaires. The follow hypotheses were tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and in order to check if there were a direct and positive effect between the constructs the followed relationships were tested: (i) Family influence to friends’ influences; (ii) Family influence to emotional attachment to the team; (iii) Family influence to team identification; (iv) Friends' influence to emotional attachment to the team; (v) Friends' influence to team identification; (vi) Online media use to emotional attachment to the team; (vii) Online Media Use to team identification; (viii) Emotional attachment to the team’s incorporation into the self; (ix) Team identification to the team’s incorporation into the self; (x) Emotional attachment to team loyalty; (xi) Team identification to team loyalty; (xii) The team’s incorporation into the self to team loyalty. The study provides evidence that the football team can be seen by the fan as a possession and thus as part of his/her extended self (Belk, 1988, 1989). Emotional attachment and team identification are antecedents that have an impact on the team becoming part of the fan’s extended self. It appears that the incorporation of the team into the self does not impact team loyalty, measured by the consumption of games, merchandise and news. There are relevant differences between the French and the Brazilians examined in this study. The main contribution of the study is to use the Extended Self perspective (Belk, 1988, 1989, 2014) as a background to the analysis of football fandom. Therefore, it contributes to the literature on the extended self, by adding an understanding of the fan’s football team as an intangible possession that can be part of the extended self and of the attitudinal factors impacting this process. The study contributes to the understanding of how the incorporation of the team to the self is influenced by team identification, thus contributing to distinguish more precisely between the concept of identifying with a team and incorporating it into one’s self. The results suggest that related issues such as emotional attachment to the team and team identification may also play different roles depending on the fan’s culture and context. As for managerial implications, clubs can use this work to better understand French and Brazilian football fans. With the internationalization of football organizations, the results of crosscultural studies can become much more important to the management of these organizations. In this way, they will be able to develop a more effective strategy to reach their consumers.
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Dates et versions

hal-04209408 , version 1 (17-09-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04209408 , version 1

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Paula Sirimarco, Angela da Rocha, Jorge Brantes Ferreira, Guillaume Bodet. Fandom, Team Loyalty, and the Extended Self: A Study of Football Fans in Brazil and France. Forward thinking in Sport Management Strengthening Inclusivity, Accessibility and Sustainability in Sport, 31st Conference of the European Association for Sport Management, Sep 2023, Belfast (Northern Ireland), United Kingdom. ⟨hal-04209408⟩
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