Sport fans all know that rosy feeling of happiness when we hang out with others who support our favorite team. A new study conducted with sport consumers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom suggests that organizations that want to enhance their supporters' health and well-being can achieve that by bolstering their social identification with the group.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recreation, sport and tourism professors Yuhei Inoue and Mikihiro Sato say that social identification with organizations boosts our social well-being - our ability to form and sustain meaningful relationships - by giving us access to three important social and psychological resources: in-group trust, a sense of purpose and meaning, and perceived progroup norms - which are the beliefs that all group members are prioritizing our collective best interests.
The co-authors of the paper are Steve Swanson, a professor of management at Deakin University; Daniel Lock, the deputy head of sport and event management at Bournemouth University; Florida State University sport management professor James Du; and Daniel C. Funk, a professor and the Ed Rosen Senior Research Fellow in sport, tourism and hospitality management at Temple University.
The authors say that in-group trust - the sense of trust fostered by a shared affinity for the same team or group - is the pivotal element that establishes the relationship between group identification and our social well-being.
The findings were based on two studies - one with 478 fans of sport teams and organizations in the U.S. and one with 490 fans of English Premier League soccer in the U.K. The findings were the same in both studies and apply to other types of service organizations as well, said Inoue, who is the first author of the paper, published in the Journal of Business Research. The Temple Sport Industry Research Center and the Deakin University Department of Management supported the work.
"Social isolation and loneliness have become pressing social issues, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic," Inoue said. "Our study shows that sport teams and other service organizations -such as recreational centers, fitness clubs, resorts and theme parks - can help address these issues by fostering a sense of shared identity and togetherness among consumers. For this reason, it is important for these organizations to cultivate social communities developed around them."
The study integrates the perspectives of transformative service research - which explores how various service sectors such as sport, tourism, financial services, art and hospitality contribute to consumer health and well-being - with the social identity approach, which investigates the beneficial effects of group members' sharing social and psychological resources.
Prior research on service organizations and well-being focused on individuals' psychological processes, suggesting that accomplishing personally meaningful goals as part of a group satisfied members' mental and emotional needs, thereby boosting their well-being.
Building on a framework that Inoue and his colleagues identified in a 2022 paper, the authors of the current study hypothesized that five types of psychosocial resources - relatedness, purpose and meaning, perceived social support, progroup norms and in-group trust - can be mobilized by consumers' group identities.
However, in testing these resources' effects on the social well-being of U.S. and U.K. sport fans, the researchers found that only three - purpose and meaning, progroup norms and in-group trust -influenced the relationship between group identification and well-being. Moreover, the researchers found that in-group trust acted as the antecedent of social well-being, transmitting the indirect effects of progroup norms and of purpose and meaning.
Media coverage of the sports industry primarily focuses on its financial performance, overlooking the psychosocial benefits such as the sense of community that is fostered among fans, Sato said. "We hope that our findings can provide some evidence that sport teams do not exist just for making a profit, selling advertisements or sponsorships, but to create connections and a sense of community that promotes people's well-being. We believe that is an important aspect of the social value of sports and spectatorship."
And the best news may be that teams need not win the World Series, the World Cup or even have a stellar record for fans to benefit, Inoue said. "Our previous research found that supporting a team with a poor win-loss record can sometimes provide even greater psychological benefits. We believe this is partly because such benefits arise from the community formed around sport teams - as demonstrated in the current study - rather than from the short-term happiness associated with winning."
Inoue, Lock, Sato and Funk found in that earlier study, published in Sport Management Review in 2022, that group identification drives members to subjectively judge their favorite team's on-field performance, a coping strategy that helps fans keep connecting with their team and enhances their social well-being when the team is performing poorly. The study, which included middle-aged and older adults, was conducted while Inoue was on the faculty of Manchester Metropolitan University.
As it turns out, winning really is not everything - or even the main thing in terms of our well-being and happiness. It is the social connectivity and camaraderie with others who cheer along with us and groan in unison when the field goals and jump shots go awry.
Inoue said some sport teams - such as the Cheesehead Nation of Green Bay Packer mega fans - excel at building social communities around fans' group identity, using digital platforms and apps that increase fan engagement and excitement. Other organizations can use these types of outreach methods to strengthen their members' social bonds and their identification with the groups, Inoue said.
