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Received: January 2020; Accepted: March 2020; Published: December 2021
Abstract: Although researchers have established the importance of understanding and considering both sport fandom and team identification within the lives of fans, direct comparisons of the importance of these variables has yet to be sufficiently investigated. The current study was designed to compare the identity centrality of two critical components of sport fandom: sport fandom (the extent to which an individual identifies with the role of sport fan) and team identification (the extent to which a fan feels a psychological connection to a team). Specifically, we were interested in the extent to which the roles of sport fan and team follower (i.e., fan of a certain team) were central to the self-identities of fans. Participants were college students (N = 567) who completed a questionnaire packet containing demographics items, assessments of their sport fandom, and assessments of their team identification. The findings were consistent across multiple assessments of centrality: team identification was more central to one's identity than general sport fandom but there were no differences between team identification and fandom for a specific sport.
Keywords: sport fandom; team identification; centrality
Introduction
Recent decades have seen an impressive increase in the number of empirical and theoretical examinations of sport fans and spectators, including work from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and sport management/marketing (Wann & James, 2019). This work has expanded on our understanding of a wide variety of topics, such as factors impacting fan aggression, the causes, types, and consequences of fan affect, and the psychological health of fans. Another area targeted by sport scholars is individual difference variables. This work has identified a number of different interpersonal variables involved in sport fan reactions. For example, researchers have identified a method of classifying dysfunctional fans (Wakefield & Wann, 2006), and how this variable relates to fan aggression (Wann, Waddill, Bono, Scheuchner, & Ruga, 2017). Other studies have targeted additional aspects of personality, including Big Five traits (McCrae & Costa, 1987) such as neuroticism and extroversion (Appelbaum et al., 2012; Donavan, Carlson, & Zimmerman, 2005), while others have examined demographic variables such as age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status (see Wann & James, 2019, for a review of this literature).
However, the two individual differences...