Green Consumer Behavior of Sports Enthusiasts on TikTok-An Analysis of the Moderating Effect of Green Concern.

The short-form video platform TikTok has become highly popular. This study explores how professional sports teams can effectively leverage short-form videos to promote green values such as environmental conservation and sustainable development, thereby capturing user attention and enhancing user engagement. This study primarily aimed to investigate the effects of a green brand image on green word of mouth (WOM), customer stickiness, and consumer purchase intention, with further examination regarding the moderating effect of green concerns on these relationships. Few studies have explored the presence of professional sports teams on TikTok, particularly in the context of green issues. Accordingly, this study adopts a novel method to develop specific and actionable recommendations for professional sports teams who have a presence on social media. Additionally, via the application of the Stimulus-Organism-Response theory, this study explains how the green brand image presented by professional sports teams on TikTok influences the interactive relationships among green WOM, customer stickiness, and consumer purchase intention. This study recruited 600 individuals who were either fans of the Taipei Fubon Braves, which is a team in Taiwan's professional basketball league P.LEAGUE+, or fans of other teams. After a confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. The results indicate positive correlations in all tested paths. The green concern of the Taipei Fubon Braves' fans moderated the relationship between green WOM and purchase intention; however, this moderating effect was not identified among the non-Taipei Fubon Braves fans. These findings introduce innovative concepts to the field of marketing, contributing substantially to both practical applications and academic research.

Effects of Online Video Sport Spectatorship on the Subjective Well-Being of College Students: The Moderating Effect of Sport Involvement.

Individuals' engagement in sports and sport-related entertainment is reported to improve their subjective well-being (SWB). We investigated whether online video sport spectatorship (OVSS) enhances the SWB of college students and whether sport involvement moderates the correlation between OVSS and SWB. For this, a pretest-posttest experimental design with a 3-week-long intervention (OVSS) was adopted. Two groups, intervention and control, were formed. The findings revealed that OVSS improved SWB (p = 0.017). Furthermore, sport involvement moderated the correlation between OVSS and SWB (p = 0.024). Specifically, participants with high levels of sport involvement in the intervention group exhibited better SWB (M = 5.51) than did the corresponding controls (M = 4.69). By contrast, among participants with low levels of sport involvement, only the intervention group showed improved SWB; however, it remained unchanged in the control group. The present study enriches the relevant literature and provides empirical evidence for the psychological benefits conferred by OVSS. Our findings may serve as a reference for designing interventions aimed at improving individuals' overall quality of life.

The relationship between physical activity trajectories and frailty: a 20-year prospective cohort among community-dwelling older people.

BACKGROUND: Studies on examining the relationship between physical activity patterns and frailty are lacking. This study examined physical activity patterns in older people and investigated the relationship between physical activity and frailty as well as identifying the predictors of frailty. METHODS: We used a nationally representative longitudinal database, the Taiwan Longitudinal Study of Aging (TLSA) database, and data for a 20-year period were extracted and analyzed. A total of 5131 participants aged ≥ 60 years in 1996 were included in the current analysis. Information regarding demographic characteristics, frailty, physical activity, comorbidities, oral health, and depressive symptoms was extracted from the TLSA database. Physical activity patterns were examined using group-based trajectory modeling from 1996 to 2015. Potential predictors were examined by performing multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS: Four trajectories of the physical activity pattern were found: consistently physically inactive (33.7%), consistently physically active (21.5%), incline (21.6%), and decline (23.2%). Throughout the period, the trajectories of the four groups significantly differed from each other at year 2015, with the incline and decline groups exhibiting the lowest and highest frailty scores, respectively (p < 0.001). Older age, male, poor oral health, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and depressive symptoms were identified as risk factors for frailty. CONCLUSION: Physical activity reduces the risk of chronic conditions, which contributes to healthy longevity. This study can guide the development of future research and interventions to manage frailty in older people, particularly in considering previous physical activity trajectories within the life course.

Robustness of autoencoders for establishing psychometric properties based on small sample sizes: results from a Monte Carlo simulation study and a sports fan curiosity study.

Background: The principal component analysis (PCA) is known as a multivariate statistical model for reducing dimensions into a representation of principal components. Thus, the PCA is commonly adopted for establishing psychometric properties, i.e., the construct validity. Autoencoder is a neural network model, which has also been shown to perform well in dimensionality reduction. Although there are several ways the PCA and autoencoders could be compared for their differences, most of the recent literature focused on differences in image reconstruction, which are often sufficient for training data. In the current study, we looked at details of each autoencoder classifier and how they may provide neural network superiority that can better generalize non-normally distributed small datasets. Methodology: A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted, varying the levels of non-normality, sample sizes, and levels of communality. The performances of autoencoders and a PCA were compared using the mean square error, mean absolute value, and Euclidian distance. The feasibility of autoencoders with small sample sizes was examined. Conclusions: With extreme flexibility in decoding representation using linear and non-linear mapping, this study demonstrated that the autoencoder can robustly reduce dimensions, and hence was effective in building the construct validity with a sample size as small as 100. The autoencoders could obtain a smaller mean square error and small Euclidian distance between original dataset and predictions for a small non-normal dataset. Hence, when behavioral scientists attempt to explore the construct validity of a newly designed questionnaire, an autoencoder could also be considered an alternative to a PCA.

Persuasion effect of corporate social responsibility initiatives in professional sport franchise: Moderating effect analysis.

This study used the elaboration likelihood model as a theoretical basis to explore the effects of various persuasion strategies on consumer perception and attitude regarding the corporate image of sports organizations that engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. The moderating effects of involvement, sports team identification, and sports fan curiosity were also examined. The multiple-study approach was employed to increase the external validity of the research. Two studies with cross-sectional between-subject pre-post experimental design were conducted with a total of 390 participants. The research setting was the Fubon Guardians baseball team of the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Study I and the Taiwan Beer Basketball Team of the Super Basketball League in Study II. Communication through the central and peripheral routes improved consumers' CSR perception. Furthermore, under low involvement, weak sports team identification, and low sports fan curiosity conditions, communication through the central route and peripheral route improved the participants' CSR perception. However, under high involvement, strong sports team identification, and high sports fan curiosity conditions, the different communication methods had nonsignificantly different effects. The findings of this study provide both academic contributions and practical implications.

An exploratory study on the relationship between parents' passion for sport/exercise and children's self- and task-perceptions in sport/exercise.

This study investigated the relationship between parents' passion for sport/exercise and children's self- and task-perceptions in sport and exercise. Paired samples of 312 children, 312 fathers, and 312 mothers were collected using two-stage sampling; parents were classified based on their passion for sport and exercise as high concordance if both parents had a high passion for sport and exercise, low concordance if neither parent had a passion for sport and exercise, or discordant. Intrinsic interest value, attainment value/importance, extrinsic utility value, ability/expectancy, task difficulty, and required effort were measured, as well as harmonious and obsessive passion. Children's self- and task-perceptions in sport and exercise were examined with respect to parents' passion for sport and exercise. The results of the study indicated that children of parents with high concordance in harmonious passion for sport and exercise scored higher on intrinsic interest value, attainment value/importance, extrinsic utility value, ability/expectancy, task difficulty, and required effort in sport and exercise than counterparts with discordant and low concordance parents. Similar patterns were found for obsessive passion in parents.