Spectator sport now plays a significant role in people’s lives worldwide (Funk, Filo, Beaton, & Pritchard, 2009; Wang, Ho, & Zhang, 2012). For instance, of nearly 200 million adults in the United States who considered themselves sport fans, approximately 80% actively checked sport-related information and game results on a daily basis through various media channels, such as television and the Internet (King, 2005). This broad popular interest in sport can also be observed in Asia. For example, in Beijing, China, the National Basketball Association (NBA) hosted its first Chinese New Year Celebration between January 21 and 28, 2012 and attracted 96 million viewers (Martin, 2012). It is evident that spectator sport has become a common leisure activity (Trail, Anderson, & Fink, 2000). Consequently, the popularity of spectator sport has drawn researchers’ attention (e.g., Wang, Zhang, & Tsuji, 2011) to the examination of the underlying reasons for such a high level of sport spectatorship.

One primary framework for studying sport spectatorship is built on the concept of spectator motives and their impact on spectator behavior (Grove, Dorsch, & Hopkins, 2012). For instance, Wang et al. (2011) used 18 motives to predict spectators’ attitudinal and behavioral loyalty in a professional sport setting. Nevertheless, researchers have reported inconsistent findings regarding the predictive power of varied spectator motives in different sport contexts (Byon, Cottingham, & Carroll, 2010; Wu, Tsai, & Hung, 2012). This inconsistency could possibly hinder researchers from better understanding the underlying mechanism that leads to frequent sport spectator behavior. In this study, we conjectured on the basis of a review of literature, that the inconsistency could be ascribed to researchers’ failure to consider whether or not spectators fulfill their motives through spectator sport. Moreover, as suggested by Ryan and Deci (2001), fulfillment of human needs can lead to improved well-being. As a result, we investigated empirically the role of spectator well-being resulting from motive fulfillment in the relationship between spectator motives and behavior.

Literature Review

Spectator Motives and Their Fulfillment

Motivation is conceptualized as “the drives, urges, wishes, or desires which initiate the sequence of events known as behavior” (Bayton, 1958, p. 282). According to Trail et al. (2000), individuals watch sport to fulfill underlying intrinsic motives. Of the wide array of identified spectator motives, five were used in the present study: escape, aesthetics, achievement, knowledge, and family. The escape motive suggests that individuals watch or attend sporting events as a means of escaping from daily routines. Sport can, thus, be viewed as a diversion from everyday life (Duncan, 1983; Sloan, 1989). On the other hand, the aesthetics motive suggests that people watch sport to appreciate its inherent beauty and artistry (Smith, 1988; Wann, 1995). According to the achievement and knowledge motives, spectator sport can be a way for spectators to obtain a sense of achievement vicariously and gain sport-related knowledge, such as game plays and strategies, respectively (Pelletier et al., 1995; Trail et al., 2000). Trail et al. and Wann suggest that watching sport enables individuals to interact and bond with family members, thus fulfilling the family motive.

Spectator motives have been commonly used to directly predict frequent sport spectator behavior (e.g., Funk et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2011). However, researchers have largely overlooked the fulfillment of spectator motives resulting from sport spectatorship. In contrast, we consider this factor to be important. For example, the future attendance of individuals who attend sporting events to satisfy their family motive, would likely depend on whether or not their need to improve the quality of their family relationship was being met. Therefore, the fulfillment of spectator motives can be the basis for spectator repatronage decisions.

The failure to consider the fulfillment of spectator motives may have potentially reduced the predictability of using spectator motives to study spectator behavior. For example, the motivation for people’s need for vicarious achievement was found to significantly predict spectator attendance at wheelchair rugby events (Byon et al., 2010) but not at professional baseball events (Wu et al., 2012). Furthermore, regarding female sport, the vicarious achievement motive was found to be associated positively with spectator support for basketball events but negatively for soccer events (Funk, Mahony, & Ridinger, 2002; Funk, Ridinger, & Moorman, 2003). Consequently, in this study, we predicted that a potential solution for the inconsistency and context dependency in the spectator behavior and motives relationship could be found by directly examining the role of the fulfillment of spectator motives.

Spectator Well-Being

Spectator well-being is one approach for the examination of this role. According to Ryan and Deci (2001), well-being is a multidimensional construct, which contains two related, but empirically distinct, aspects: hedonism and eudaimonism. The hedonic aspect of well-being represents one’s subjective feelings of pleasure and happiness (Kahneman, Diener, & Schwarz, 1999), and it can include both physiological and psychological happiness (Kubovy, 1999). On the other hand, the eudaimonic component suggests that well-being is not only the gaining of pleasure and happiness but also the actualization of the true self (Waterman, 1993).

An important factor contributing to one’s well-being is satisfying human basic needs, from which both aspects of well-being can benefit (Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2001). For example, according to Baumeister and Leary (1995), lack of social belongingness and quality relationships can significantly damage one’s well-being and result in unhappiness. Authors of recent studies on spectator sport have found empirical support for the positive relationship between need fulfillment and well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2001). This functionalist view of spectator sport has been supported by a heightened well-being rating being reported by individuals who frequently attend sporting events in the United States (Grove et al., 2012).

Similar results have been identified in Asian sport. For instance, Choi, Kim, and Kwon (2011), in their study of spectators at a major motorsport in Korea, found both eudaimonic and hedonic well-being were positively related to spectator motives such as aesthetics and family. More importantly, spectators who reported improved well-being also indicated an increased likelihood of attending future sporting events. Accordingly, their heightened revisit intention could be logically ascribed to the fulfillment of spectator motives, which could also lead to other spectator behavior such as word-of-mouth (WOM). WOM refers to consumer-initiated recommendations to other customers (Verhoef, Franses, & Hoekstra, 2002). Customers who are satisfied with their consumption experience often exhibit a greater tendency to engage in WOM than do those who are not satisfied (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1988; Söderlund, 1998). Consequently, individuals who satisfy their basic needs through sport spectatorship can be expected to recommend this to their friends or family.

In sum, we argue that although spectators are often motivated by their unmet needs and desires to attend sporting events (Trail et al., 2000), their future behavior may not be driven by their needs or motives per se. Rather, individuals’ continuing sport spectatorship could result from the happiness and self-actualization experienced during their visits. Therefore, we proposed that frequent sport spectator behavior involves a process which begins with individuals’ unsatisfied needs and continues by satisfying those needs, thus improving their well-being which, in turn, leads to repatronage. Overall, we hypothesized that spectator well-being would mediate the relationship between spectator motives and frequent sport spectator behavior of which revisit intention and WOM were examined because of their importance to many sport organizations.

Method

Participants

Systematic random sampling was used to approach potential participants. Every ninth spectator entering the 2010 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix (F-1) venue was intercepted by trained assistants. Of the 552 surveys that were collected between April 15 and 17, 2010, in Shanghai, China, one was discarded owing to excessive missing values, resulting in 551 usable surveys. The majority of participants were men (57%) and first-time attendees (82.8%). Most spectators attended the F-1 either with friends (49.5%) or family members (19.1%). Participants’ demographic information is shown in Table 1.

Procedure

A questionnaire measuring the research constructs and participants’ background information was distributed. Items measuring the five spectator motives and both aspects of well-being, as a result of their attendance, were adopted from previous studies (Choi et al., 2011; Kim & Yang, 2006). These items, which were developed in Korean and have been used in similar international motorsport events, were translated into Chinese and then back-translated by two bilingual translators. There were also six items measuring spectator revisit intention and WOM adopted from previous studies (Choi et al., 2011; Oliver, 1980). These items were reviewed for content validity after discussion with scholars with expertise in spectator sport, especially F-1, before being adopted. The same translation from Korean to Chinese and back-translation approach was employed. Both versions of the questionnaire are available on request. Item responses were measured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Data Analysis

Data were analyzed using AMOS version 8.0 and SPSS version 18.0 for Windows. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to examine the psychometric properties of the proposed measurement model, and a structural equation model (SEM) was subsequently conducted to test the proposed structural model and the mediation effect of well-being. The reliability of the constructs and their corresponding indicators was evaluated based on Cronbach’s alpha and construct reliability (CR) with a .70 threshold, and average variance extracted (AVE) with a cut-off value of .50. In addition, the overall model fit was evaluated using the comparative fit index (CFI), the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), as suggested by Hair, Black, Babin, and Anderson (2010).

A bootstrapping procedure with 5,000 bootstrap samples and 95% confidence interval (CI) was conducted to test the proposed mediation effect of well-being. Following Zhao, Lynch, and Chen’s (2010) recommendation, the 95% CI of the indirect effect (independent variables → mediator → dependent variables) containing no zero indicated a significant mediation. This mediation test appears to be less biased than Sobel’s z test and superior to the Baron-Kenny procedure (Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008; Zhao et al., 2010).

Results

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Kurtosis and skewness of all items were first examined, and no extreme values exceeding 3.0 were found (Chou & Bentler, 1995). The internal consistency of the survey items ranged from α = .82 to .92, meeting the suggested .70 cut-off (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). AVE values were calculated for all constructs. No factors indicated an AVE value lower than the suggested .50 threshold, demonstrating support for convergent validity (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). In addition, as no interfactor correlations (see Table 2) were found to exceed the .85 cut-off value, discriminant validity was ensured (Kline, 2005).

The results of CFA with a maximum likelihood estimation suggested the measurement model fit the data well (χ² = 1137.60, df = 398, p < .001, CFI = .94, RMSEA = .058, 90% CI = .054–.062, SRMR = .039). A closer examination of the individual indicators found the five items had loadings below the suggested .70 threshold (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). Nevertheless, all items were retained because previous researchers (e.g., Choi et al., 2011; Kim & Yang, 2006) have suggested that they are theoretically relevant to their respective constructs. The values of mean scores, factor loadings, Cronbach’s alpha, CR, and AVE for the measurement model are shown in Table 3.

Structural Equation Modeling

As suggested by Ryan and Deci (2001), well-being is a multidimensional construct which contains two related, but empirically distinct, aspects: hedonism and eudaimonism. To capture its multidimensional nature, we operationalized well-being as the second-order latent variable with hedonic and eudaimonic well-being serving as two first-order latent variables. We also treated all other constructs as first-order latent variables (see Figure 1). The results for SEM indicated the proposed structural model fit the data well.

The results of the mediation analysis indicated that well-being mediates the effects of all spectator motives on spectator revisit intention and WOM. Specifically, eight indirect-only mediations were found: Well-being fully mediated the effects of the achievement, escape, and knowledge motives on revisit intention and the effects of the achievement, escape, knowledge, and family motives on WOM. In addition, two complementary mediations (aesthetics → well-being → revisit intention and aesthetics → well-being → WOM) were identified (for mediation terminology, see Zhao et al., 2010). Overall, 32.1% of the variance in revisit intention and 60.8% of the variance in WOM were explained both directly and indirectly by the five spectator motives. The results of the mediation analysis are summarized in Table 4.

Discussion

As we expected, the results indicated that the effects of the spectator motives on sport spectator revisit intention and the spectators’ willingness to engage in WOM were found to be mediated by their reported well-being resulting from their initial sporting event attendance.

Theoretical Implications

The first theoretical implication relates to the functionalist role of sport in society (Grove et al., 2012). Although researchers have largely focused on commercial values in sport, such as sponsorship (e.g., Lee & Cho, 2012) and economic impact (e.g., Barajas & Urrutia, 2007), sport should be more than a business. It is also a social agency which can contribute to individuals’ well-being and can improve society as a whole (Coakley, 2009; Frey & Eitzen, 1991; Grove et al., 2012). Regrettably, the notion of spectator well-being has been largely ignored by researchers of spectator sport. From a functionalist viewpoint, in this study we have provided empirical evidence supporting the ability of sport to assist people by satisfying and fulfilling their basic human needs through sport spectatorship.

In addition, the current findings heighten understanding of frequent sport spectator behavior. The omission of spectator well-being by previous researchers has led to an inability to use spectator motives accurately to explain and predict spectator behavior. Consequently, a trend of developing instruments that are sporting event-specific and based on microlevel variables has been observed recently (Byon, Zhang, & Connaughton, 2010). Therefore, researchers have focused on identifying a variety of spectator motives to explain sport spectator behavior (e.g., Funk, Mahony, Nakazawa, & Hirakawa, 2001; Funk et al., 2002, Funk et al., 2003). We concentrated on the role of spectator well-being, which we found was determined by their motives to attend motorsport events. In addition, it is most important that spectator well-being determined both their revisit intention and WOM recommendations to others who were experiencing similar basic needs and/or motives. Although it seems reasonable that motives can play an important role when individuals initially decide to watch sport, their revisit intention may be determined by whether or not watching sport improves their well-being by fulfilling their intrinsic motivation, such as a need for family bonding or sense of achievement. Hence, with a better understanding of the underlying mechanism leading to frequent sport spectator behavior, it is likely that the proliferation of context-specific scales will no longer be necessary.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

We have made an initial attempt to incorporate the mediational role of spectator well-being into the investigation of the underlying reasons for frequent sport spectator behavior. Nevertheless, there are several limitations in this study. Although there is an array of identified spectator motives (see Funk et al., 2003), we considered only five. Another limitation concerns cultural differences between the West and East. Researchers have found that Eastern and Western cultures differ significantly in terms of patterns of pursuing benefits and thinking (Luo, 2008). Lastly, we conducted this study only in a motorsport setting. Thus, the generalizability of this study is potentially limited to Eastern cultures and motorsport events.

Four future research directions were identified on the basis of these limitations. The study of sport spectatorship can be an extremely complex process owing to sport’s enormous commercial and social impact. Therefore, researchers could take other spectator motives into account. Another important task for researchers could be to establish the external validity and generalizability of existing findings. The third future direction concerns the two complementary or partial mediations between aesthetics and spectator revisit intention and WOM. The complementary mediations indicate that sport spectatorship can be a complex social phenomenon affected by more than mere improvement in well-being. According to Grove et al. (2012), benefits in addition to well-being, such as fostering one’s patriotism and facilitating a better understanding of gender roles, can be created by sport. Future researchers could, therefore, include additional mediators which could play a role in determining frequent sport spectator behavior. Finally, the inter-relationship between spectator motives and the two aspects of well-being could be considered separately. For example, spectator motives, such as knowledge and vicarious achievement, may be more closely related to eudaimonic well-being, whereas the family and escape motives may be more likely to bring about individuals’ happiness that is fundamental to hedonic well-being.

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Suk Kyu Kim, Sport Management Program, Department of Kinesiology, College of Education, University of Georgia–Athens, 363 Ramsey Center, Athens, GA 30602, USA. Email: [email protected]