Coping with Losses: Need Un-fulfillment and its Influence on Sport Consumer’s Temporal Psychological Well-being

Jeeyoon Jamie Kim (SPM) PI
2018-2019 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant Award
2018-2019 Sport and Human Development Institute Seed Grant Award

Losing is an imperative part of sport, but has garnered relatively less attention in sport consumer well-being research. Therefore, this research project investigates how sport consumers psychologically process their sport team’s loss and how the process impacts one’s well-being state. With focus on the constructs of need un-fulfillment and coping, the project examines:

the un-fulfillment of psychological needs (i.e., pleasure/arousal, achievement, social belonging) that comes from watching one’s team lose, and its link to one’s well-being state (i.e., happiness, depression, self-esteem, stress),
coping strategies as the mediator between need un-fulfillment and one’s well-being state, and
team identification (or fanship) as a moderator in the relations among the constructs.
A natural field experiment study will be conducted examining sport consumer’s psychological experience (need un-fulfillment, coping) in and well-being state after watching a loss of the sport team they identify with. Data will be collected with two-wave (pre-post loss) online surveys targeting general sport consumers, and analyzed with SEM and multi-group analysis. The findings will contribute in understanding and developing strategies to promote sport consumer well-being.