Investigating the cognitive and social behaviors of fans and the effect of these behaviors on their enthusiasm to attend the stadium

This study was aimed to investigate the cognitive and social behaviors of fans and the effect of these behaviors on their enthusiasm to attend the stadium. The research method is applied in terms of purpose and terms of type in the category of descriptive-correlational research and is based on structural equation modeling. In this regard, 384 spectators of the sports teams of the top leagues of the team and individual disciplines in Iran based on the size of the unknown community and using Morgan table and randomly selected as a statistical sample. To collect data, 3 standard questionnaires of fan enthusiasm (Yoshida et al., 2014), social behaviors (Trail et al., 2005), and cognitive behaviors (positive emotions, Mazodier et al., 2011; emotion expression, Trail and et al., 2012) were used. Data analysis showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between cognitive behaviors and its components with fan enthusiasm and between social behaviors and fan enthusiasm (P <0.05). Also, it was found that cognitive and social behaviors have the ability to predict the enthusiasm of fans by 0.36 and 0.46, respectively. Finally, the model of structural equations of research variables showed that cognitive and social behaviors affect the enthusiasm of fans to attend the stadium and the research model has a good fit. Finally, according to the results of the research, it can be said that the cognitive and social behaviors of the fans affect their enthusiasm to attend the stadium and cause them to return and re-attend to watch sports matches in the stadium.