Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Approaches to the Formation of Individual Sport Fans’ Psychological Ownership and Its Impacts on Prosocial Behavior, Attendance Intention, and Psychological Well-Being

The authors aimed to (a) investigate the underlying mechanism of how individual sport fans form psychological ownership using cognitive, affective, and behavioral approaches and (b) identify the outcomes of psychological ownership. Across three studies with between-subjects experimental designs ( N Cognitive-approach = 278; N Affective-approach = 436, N Behavioral-approach = 412), we revealed that fans in group-self-identification (vs. personal-self-identification) condition perceived a higher degree of empowerment, resulting in the formation of psychological ownership in all studies. Furthermore, we identified that prosocial behavior, attendance intention, and psychological well-being were the downstream consequences for psychological ownership. The results of the cross-validation analysis in Study 3 indicated no significant interaction effect of identification type (personal-self-identification vs. group-self-identification) and cultures (individualism vs. collectivism) on perceived empowerment. However, an additional three-way interaction analysis revealed a significant and negative conditional interaction effect only in the low collective identification group. Last, theoretical and practical implications were discussed based on these findings.