انگیزش مصرف‌کننده ورزشی: استقلال و جهت‌گیری‌های کنترلی تنظیم‌کننده رفتارهای طرفداران

The vast majority of research on sport consumers fails to utilize a theoretical understanding of motivation to examine behaviour. Self-Determination Theory was used to develop a new understanding of sport consumer motivation. Sport consumer motivation is conceptualized as representing autonomy and control orientations that energize a desire to engage in sport goal directed behaviour to acquire positive benefits. A multi-attribute survey instrument was designed to measure five motivational sub-types and administered to three samples of sport consumers, with the goal of testing for reliability and validity (N = 1222). Structural equation modelling analysis revealed that control orientation of sport motivation regulates desired benefits of socialization and diversion. In contrast, autonomy orientation of motivation regulates desired benefits of performance, esteem and excitement. Sport consumer motivation explained over 60% of the variance in game attendance, media usage, wearing team related clothing and purchasing team related merchandise. Results illustrate how sport consumer motivation represents intrinsically motivated behaviour that treats sport consumption activity as an end in itself as well as extrinsically motivated behaviour as the engagement in an activity is to obtain a separable instrumental outcome from the activity itself.

The vast majority of sport consumer research has failed to utilize a broader theoretical framework of motivation to better understand behaviour. The current research integrates recent scale reduction work on sport motives (Funk et al., 2009) with Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985a) to develop a parsimonious understanding of sport consumer motivation. Sport consumer motivation is conceptualized as a self-determined and volitional state that energizes a desire to engage in sport goal directed behaviour to acquire positive benefits. Conceptually, we argue that sport consumer motivation is regulated by self-determined intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to engage in sport consumption activities. This regulation has two orientations; autonomy orientation and control orientation that energize sub-types of motivation (i.e., motives) that represent cognitive expressions of an individual's desire to seek out a consumption experience to acquire benefits of Socialization, Performance, Excitement, Esteem and Diversion. Empirical results provided support for this motivational orientation approach to explain how often individuals attend games; purchase and wear team related merchandise; and use media sources to follow a sport team. The data analyses revealed that control orientation regulates the desired benefits of socialization and diversion that satisfy important individual needs. Individuals use sport consumption activities as a means for social interaction with other spectators, participants, friends and family as well as escaping daily work and life routines (Madrigal, 2006 and Wann, 1995). These two benefits are less dependent upon the unique nature of the sport product or service. These benefits can be obtained through many consumption experiences beyond sport (e.g., restaurants, theatre, casinos) and reflect extrinsically self-determined goal pursuits of engaging in the sport consumption activities as a means to an end. The autonomy orientation of sport motivation regulates benefits of performance, esteem and excitement that satisfy important needs and had the greatest influence on sport consumer motivation as predicted by SDT. Individuals engage in sport consumption for the atmospheric conditions and emotion produced during a sport spectacle, to experience vicarious achievement depending upon the outcome of athletic competition and to a lesser degree activities for aesthetic pleasure of representation and movement (Sloan, 1989 and Deighton, 1992). These three benefits are more dependent upon the nature of the sport consumption experience (e.g., competition, atmospherics, athletes) as an end result in itself that contributes to perceptions of the meaning of the sport experience (Kahle et al., 1996). Conceptually, autonomy and control orientations reflect different goal directed pursuits to achieve benefit types. However, jointly they provide a good explanation of behaviours related to sport teams that may be either direct or indirect (Pritchard & Funk, 2006). Sport consumer motivation explained 61% of the variance in self-reported number of games attended. These results augment recent efforts to use motivational constructs to explain behaviour. Funk et al.’s (2009) hybrid approach explained 30% of self-reported behaviour using the five SPEED facets. However, by adopting autonomy and control orientations to understand motivation, a more robust understanding of sport consumer behaviour was demonstrated. In addition, the level of sport consumer motivation explained 61% of the frequency of watching the television and reading the newspaper to obtain information about a professional sport team. Finally, sport consumer motivation explained 61% of variance in frequency of wearing team related clothing and purchasing team related merchandise.