IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsmrxx/v28y2025i4p796-822.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unveiling the emotional edge: how fans’ emotional attachment influences the relationships between fanship, fandom, subjective well-being, and attitudinal loyalty

Author

Listed:
  • Giorgio Portaluri
  • Daniel Lock
  • Yuhei Inoue
  • Rita Mura
  • Francesca Vicentini

Abstract

Emotions are hallmarks of more internalised and meaningful sport fan identities. Building on this premise, we use the social identity approach to explore how fans’ emotional attachment affects the relationships between fanship (i.e. personal identification with a team), fandom (i.e. social identification with fellow fans), subjective well-being (SWB), and attitudinal loyalty. We used structural equation modelling to analyse data from fans (N = 571) of two Italian Serie A association football teams. Results highlighted a positive association between fandom and SWB. SWB positively mediated the relationship between fandom and attitudinal loyalty. Moreover, emotional attachment negatively moderated the relationships between fanship and SWB, and between fandom and attitudinal loyalty. These results indicated that high identifiers feeling strong emotional attachment to the team displayed lower SWB and attitudinal loyalty toward the team. Practitioners and organisations may benefit from implementing initiatives and programs addressing the side effects of fans’ emotions.

Suggested Citation

  • Giorgio Portaluri & Daniel Lock & Yuhei Inoue & Rita Mura & Francesca Vicentini, 2025. "Unveiling the emotional edge: how fans’ emotional attachment influences the relationships between fanship, fandom, subjective well-being, and attitudinal loyalty," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(4), pages 796-822, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:28:y:2025:i:4:p:796-822
    DOI: 10.1080/14413523.2025.2513100
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14413523.2025.2513100
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14413523.2025.2513100?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:28:y:2025:i:4:p:796-822. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rsmr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.