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The objective of the study was to better understand the sports fan by developing a scale to capture the construct of sports involvement and by exploring the relationship between sports involvement and sports-related behaviors. Two aspects of sports involvement were found a cognitive and an affective dimension. Both factors were related to viewing sports on television, reading about sports in magazines and newspapers, attending sporting events, and participating in sports.
Sports fans are a unique group of individuals to study because many are highly involved and have an emotional attachment to sport. While there have been many studies that have examined the importance of sports to people (e.g., Wann, 1995), there has been no attempt, to date, to develop a scale to specifically assess sports involvement from a psychological rather than a purely behavioral (e.g., participation, spectatorship) perspective.
The primary objective of this study was to develop an involvement scale in the context of sports. In addition to designing a scale to capture the sports involvement construct, the study also sought to a) understand the media habits of individuals as they relate to sports, b) examine exercise habits and levels of participation in sports, c) develop a demographic profile of the sports fan, and d) explore the relationship between sports involvement and variables such as demographics, exercise habits, and media habits.
A number of studies have examined sports fans and sports spectators, exploring such issues as their demographic profile (e.g., Yergin, 1986; Gauthier and Hansen, 1993), their motivations (e.g., Murrel and Dietz,1992; Wann,1995; Gantz and Wenner, 1995), their newspaper readership (Gamst, Sutherland, and Evans, 1993) and their television viewing behavior (Gantz and Wenner, 1991). Likewise, research has also looked at sports participants, examining their motivations (e.g., Rudman,1989) and their commitment to sport participation (e.g., Scanlon, Carpenter, Schmidt, Simons, and Keeler, 1993). There have also been efforts to distinguish sports participants from sports spectators and fans (e.g., Burnett, Menon, and Smart, 1993).
There have been fewer studies that have examined sport involvement in the sense that the concept is used as a psychological construct. Zaichkowsky (1985) defines involvement as "a person's perceived relevance of the object based on inherent needs, values, and interests". Mittal (1995) states that the underlying theme of all definitions of involvement...