Mediating Roles of Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Enjoyment between Psychological Commitment to a Team and Loyalty to the Team's Website

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of Kinesiology, University of Central Missouri, United States

Abstract

Although previous studies have considerably highlighted the importance of understanding various aspects of online sport consumer behavior (e.g., Brown, 2003; Filo & Funk, 2005; Hur et al., 2007), few studies have been conducted to investigate sport fan behavior in the online context. The purpose of this study is to examine mediating roles of perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment between psychological commitment to a team and loyalty to the team’s website. The results of structural equation modeling analyses revealed that perceived enjoyment is a partial mediating variable when explaining the relationship. This result implies that sport marketers should develop and manage a team’s website with fun and enjoyable content to make loyal fans loyal to the website.

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