Understanding the Relationship between Past Experience of a Sports Mega-Event and Current Spectatorship: The Mediating Role of Nostalgia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall, this manuscript is well-written and addresses a current gap in SME literature, particularly the role of the concept of nostalgia as a mediator. The theoretical frameworks supporting the hypotheses are sufficiently presented and the methods are designed properly to the questions raised. I think this manuscript deals with relevant issues to sport marketing/tourism and makes an important contribution to the disciplines. There are a few suggestions that should be addressed:

 

Introduction

 

-It would help the reader understand your research better with the definition of sport spectatorship used in your research at somewhere in Introduction (or in 2.1 section, where deemed appropriate). You used two spectatorship items, but I am not sure whether they were concerned with behaviours as TV viewers, spectators at venues, or both as I know no ideas of how they were translated into Korean and Japanese versions. Your conceptualisation of spectatorship should be aligned with the dispositions of the measures.  

 

Theoretical Framework

 

P6, L267-272: Please enhance justifications to support H3. Why/how do you think there would be different patterns between two countries?

 

Method

 

-3.1 Data Collection and Participant: Please provide when the data from Korea and Japan were collected so the age ranges (particularly minimum age) would be more understandable.

 

-P6, L275: Please specify ‘large online panel companies.’ Are they survey companies?  

 

-P6, L278-9: Further explain why there are certain levels of differences in motives, attitudes, and behaviour outcomes between young people and adults with regard to sport spectatorship. Why do they matter in your study?

 

-P7, L286: Change the term ‘appropriate’ to ‘correct’.

 

-P7, P316-7: Further elaborate the Hayes’ PROCESS macro model 4 and how this code was incorporated with SPSS.  

 

Results

 

P9, L355-8: Use the terms antecedent, mediator and consequence, rather than IV and DV.

 

Discussion

 

P12, L411-28: Elaborate why personal identify and experience nostalgia worked as a mediator in Korea and Japan, rather than overall discussion. Focus on the mediation effects, rather than changes in spectatorship before/after.

 

P12-13, L443-453: What is a purpose of this paragraph? I can’t see your discussion point, particularly compared to the first discussion (L411-428).

 

P13, L475-8: If this is the case for Korean people, I wonder why national identity did work as mediator. Any ideas/arguments on this?

 

Limitations

 

P14, L542: Specify “the term”. What do you mean by “the term” and “it” in this sentence?

Author Response

Overall, this manuscript is well-written and addresses a current gap in SME literature, particularly the role of the concept of nostalgia as a mediator. The theoretical frameworks supporting the hypotheses are sufficiently presented and the methods are designed properly to the questions raised. I think this manuscript deals with relevant issues to sport marketing/tourism and makes an important contribution to the disciplines. There are a few suggestions that should be addressed:

At the outset, we would like to thank the all the reviewers for their conductive and helpful comments on our manuscript. The time and effort that we went into the reviewers is greatly appreciated.

We have given careful thought to all of your concerns and suggestions for improvement and have completed a revision that incorporates the issues raised in the reviews. We believe that the manuscript is significantly stronger now.

Once again, we are grateful for your insightful comments.

Overall, this manuscript is well-written and addresses a current gap in SME literature, particularly the role of the concept of nostalgia as a mediator. The theoretical frameworks supporting the hypotheses are sufficiently presented and the methods are designed properly to the questions raised. I think this manuscript deals with relevant issues to sport marketing/tourism and makes an important contribution to the disciplines. There are a few suggestions that should be addressed:

Thank you for your positive and encouraging words for all those issues in the previous paper.

Following your comments and suggestions, we have reorganized the paper focusing on the most important elements needed for delivering the core message of our research.

Introduction

-It would help the reader understand your research better with the definition of sport spectatorship used in your research at somewhere in Introduction (or in 2.1 section, where deemed appropriate). You used two spectatorship items, but I am not sure whether they were concerned with behaviours as TV viewers, spectators at venues, or both as I know no ideas of how they were translated into Korean and Japanese versions. Your conceptualisation of spectatorship should be aligned with the dispositions of the measures.   

Thank you for pointing this out.

Regarding the construct of present football spectatorship (consequence), it was from Shamir & Ruskin (1984)’s spectatorship mode (frequency and regularity). It was to measure people’s present football spectatorship behaviors including both watching on media and watching at venues; how often you watch football contents and how regularly you watch football contents. In our previous study, the term ‘spectating’ includes both watch on media and watch at venues. Please see P3, L107~113.

In terms of translation issue, English version didn’t explain well enough to separate the two separate patterns. To deliver the meaning of each items clearer, we added more information based on original items (Korean and Japanese). Please see revised Appendix A (P15~16).

Again, in the original version of survey questionnaire, both in Korean and Japanese, we asked respondents if their present spectatorship pattern (watch on media and watch at venues) were changed based on frequency and regularity. Please see PFS1 and PFS2 in the revised Appendix A (P15 ~ P16).

Theoretical Framework

P6, L267-272: Please enhance justifications to support H3. Why/how do you think there would be different patterns between two countries?

Thanks for your comment.

The reason we examined the difference was South Korea and Japan has different socio-cultural background in terms of how football was developed, diffused, professionalized, and commercialized although association football (modern football) was introduced by British around same period in 19^th century. Also, since it’s cohosting events, for the first time in FIFA history, we thought that it is worth seeing how the impacts of the 2002 WC on spectatorship were different in each hosting country. We have added our rationale on cross-cultural approach to support H3 in introduction, methods, and discussion section, respectively. Please see P6, L250 ~ L263.

Method

-3.1 Data Collection and Participant: Please provide when the data from Korea and Japan were collected so the age ranges (particularly minimum age) would be more understandable.

Thanks for your comments. As you pointed out, we have added when the data were collected. Please see P7, L268 ~ L269.

-P6, L275: Please specify ‘large online panel companies.’ Are they survey companies?  

It’s the survey company that specialized in providing panel recruitment service. The reason we used a survey company was our sample was very niche respondents so that we looked for pool of respondents fitting our type of research. Please see P7, L268.

-P6, L278-9: Further explain why there are certain levels of differences in motives, attitudes, and behaviour outcomes between young people and adults with regard to sport spectatorship. Why do they matter in your study?

We focused on adult football spectatorship behavior. The biggest reason is that people from below 19 years old are mostly students. Students might have had different environment where they experience the 2002 WC. They had restricted schedule in school, had to focus on class and exams. Therefore, the way they reacted to the 2002 WC, whether in Korea and Japan, might have been different from adults. As we thought that citation [61] caused some confusion, we removed it. Instead, this is mentioned in the limitation section for future research topics. We reorganized this part by adding more explanation (P7, L270 ~ L277) in the Methods section and the Limitations and Future Study section (P14, L525 ~ L540).

-P7, L286: Change the term ‘appropriate’ to ‘correct’.

 Thanks for your comment. We have revised it accordingly. Please see P7, L282.

-P7, P316-7: Further elaborate the Hayes’ PROCESS macro model 4 and how this code was incorporated with SPSS.

Hayes’ PROCESS macro is an observed variable OLS and logistic regression path analysis modeling tool (Hayes, 2017). It has widely been used through the social, business, and health sciences for estimating direct and indirect effects in single and multiple mediator models (e.g., Chen, Chen, Zhan, & Sharma, 2020; Kim, Byon, & Pedersen, 2020; Lee, Bae, & Kim, 2020). We added the above point in the manuscript to provide rationales why the PROCESS macro was suitable in our study. Please see P8, L316 ~ L321.

The Hayes’ PROCESS macro was incorporated with SPSS as the following steps:

1. Download the software from “The PROCESS macro for SPSS, SAS, and R (https://www.processmacro.org/download.html).”
2. Install the PROCESS custom dialog file in SPSS: under the “Utilities” menu, choose “Custom Dialogs” and then “Install Custom Dialog,” then locate the PROCESS dialog builder file, finally click “Open.”
3. For the analysis, we clicked “Process v.3.4.1 by Andrew F. Hayes” from “Regression” of “Analyze” menu. Then, as we mentioned on page 9, the past World Cup experience was added to “X variable”; five factors of nostalgia to “Mediator(s)”; the present football spectatorship to “Y variable”; the present football participation and age to “Covariate(s)”; “Model number” was designated “4”.

References

• Hayes, A. F. (2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
• Lee, E. J., Bae, J., & Kim, K. H. (2020). The effect of environmental cues on the purchase intention of sustainable products. Journal of Business Research, 120, 425-433.
• Kim, K. A., Byon, K. K., & Pedersen, P. M. (2020). Coping as a Mediation Mechanism Between Severity of Spectator Dysfunctional Behavior and Revisit Intention: The Moderating Effects of Self-Construal in Sport Consumption. Journal of Sport Management, 34(1), 38-52.
• Chen, K., Chen, J., Zhan, W., & Sharma, P. (2020). When in Rome! Complaint contagion effect in multi-actor service ecosystems. Journal of Business Research, 121, 628-641.

 

Results

P9, L355-8: Use the terms antecedent, mediator and consequence, rather than IV and DV.

Thanks for your comment. We have revised it accordingly. Please see P10, L367 ~ 369 , Table 4, and 5.

Discussion

P12, L411-28: Elaborate why personal identify and experience nostalgia worked as a mediator in Korea and Japan, rather than overall discussion. Focus on the mediation effects, rather than changes in spectatorship before/after.

We fully agree with your suggestion. We have reorganized the discussion section focusing on mediation effect. Further, in terms of elaborating personal identity and experience nostalgia worked as a mediator, as previously mentioned, we suggest our discussion point in line with the result of H3 that the results of our study might be attributed to the different developmental stage in terms of how football in Japan and South Korea has been developed, organized, and professionalized. These findings are aligned with that rationale that we raised in the introduction section. Please see P13, L432 ~ P13, L480.

P12-13, L443-453: What is a purpose of this paragraph? I can’t see your discussion point, particularly compared to the first discussion (L411-428).

Thanks for your comment and we fully agree with the point that you made. We have reorganized the discussion part more concisely and focused on key findings and implications. Please see P12, L410 ~ P13, L480.

P13, L475-8: If this is the case for Korean people, I wonder why national identity did work as mediator. Any ideas/arguments on this?

Thanks for your comment. As the results shows, national identity was not statistically significant as a mediator between the past WC experience and present football participation for the Korean samples. National identity was evoked by the WC experience like other nostalgia factors. But it didn’t affect the present football spectatorship as a mediator.

However, if your question was the reason why ‘personal identity’ did work as mediator, then our findings revealed that because football in Korea was developed and diffused relatively wider and longer than Japan in terms of sportization process (e.g., South Korea’s first debut in the FIFA World Cup was 1954, and since then South Korea qualified for the World Cup five times until 2002. Most importantly, it reached the fourth place on home soil. However, Japan’s first appearance in the FIFA World Cup was 1998 and first reached the round of 16 in 2002). Further, football was used for building identity (both national and personal) by emphasizing international success or national pride. Football in Korea, especially international football matches have long been exposed to Korean people and has been playing important role in building personal identity as fans, football lovers, or Korea national team followers. This feature influenced on football spectatorship. For this reason, personal identity was significantly mediating the relationship between the past 2002 WC experience and present football spectatorship. We have reorganized the revised manuscript by adding this. Please see P13, L452 ~ L462.       

Limitations

P14, L542: Specify “the term”. What do you mean by “the term” and “it” in this sentence?

Both “the term” and “it” mean nostalgia. We revised it clearly to avoid confusion. Please P15, L552. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The focus on spectatorship as an outcome of hosting mega-sport events represents an important contribution of the paper. I also believe the integration of the nostalgia constructs represents a novel way of understanding and explaining relationships between previous spectatorship and current consumption. That said, I believe the paper can be improved on several fronts. I outline these below. My main criticism of the paper is the authors’ claim of causality and the use of an all male sample.

Abstract:

• I’m not sure, given, your design, you can claim that the event “positively influenced” the host nation’s current football spectatorship – this statement, in my view, overstates the findings of the paper. In my view, the research design does not allow the researchers to claim causality. Please temper use of “causal” language throughout the paper.

Introduction/Literature review:

• Line 60 requires clarification – what is meant by “consumed sustainability” in host nations. Consider revising this sentence.

 

• Need to build the case for why spectatorship is an important outcome; beyond that it has yet to be examined in the literature. What value does this consumptive behavior have?

 

• Hypothesis 1 needs to be theoretically justified.

 

• The theoretical/research framework needs to be re-written and better aligned with the hypothesis the authors’ outline. The research framework and each nostalgia component requires much more explanation/discussion up in the document.

 

• Line 146 – remove “him or her” and replace with “them.”

 

• Sections 2.2., 2.3., and 2.4 need to be paired down and incorporated into one section. The sole focus of this section should be justifying hypothesis 2.1 – 2.5.

 

• Hypothesis 3 needs theoretical justification.

Methods:

• Line 276: Clarify what is meant by panel companies?

 

• Why were only adult males recruited to participate in the online survey? This is extremely concerning and calls into question the generalizability of the findings.  

 

• Asking participants questions about viewership of an event 20 years ago can be challenging – How can we be sure your measures are valid and reliable? What previous research has employed similar approaches? Overall, I need more information and support for their retrospective approach to data collection. I’m not sure if it would be helpful, but I would have a review of the following paper: Looking Back in Time: The Pitfalls and Potential of Retrospective Methods in Leisure Studies: Leisure Sciences: Vol 32, No 4 (tandfonline.com)

 

• Please discuss how survey items modified from their original from in the LNS.

Results:

• I do not think you can claim causality given your research design – please temper this language accordingly. Your design does not isolate the unique influence that watching the event had on the changes in spectatorship observed. There are too many confounding variables that might be at play here.

 

• Please remove p-value columns from tables and, instead, flag significant findings using (*) and provide an explanation of significance in the note under the table. I also believe the t-value and CI columns can be removed from the tables to improve readability.

Discussion:

• Given the findings are drawn from sample of all males; I am concerned about the generalizability of the study’s findings and management/theoretical implications. I challenge the authors to address this issue.

Appendix A:

• Several of the items are not grammatically correct and do not make contextual sense. Was this how the items appeared to participants?

Author Response

The focus on spectatorship as an outcome of hosting mega-sport events represents an important contribution of the paper. I also believe the integration of the nostalgia constructs represents a novel way of understanding and explaining relationships between previous spectatorship and current consumption. That said, I believe the paper can be improved on several fronts. I outline these below. My main criticism of the paper is the authors’ claim of causality and the use of an all male sample.

At the outset, we would like to thank the all the reviewers for their conductive and helpful comments on our manuscript. The time and effort that we went into the reviewers is greatly appreciated.

We have given careful thought to all of your concerns and suggestions for improvement and have completed a revision that incorporates the issues raised in the reviews. We believe that the manuscript is significantly stronger now.

Once again, we are grateful for your insightful comments.

Following your comments and suggestions, we have reorganized the paper focusing on the most important elements needed for delivering the core message of our research.

Abstract:

• I’m not sure, given, your design, you can claim that the event “positively influenced” the host nation’s current football spectatorship – this statement, in my view, overstates the findings of the paper. In my view, the research design does not allow the researchers to claim causality. Please temper use of “causal” language throughout the paper.

Thank you for pointing this out. Our study initially aimed to find the relationship between past experience and present spectatorship using multivariate regression analysis, Process Macro. This statistical program was supposed to test the causal relation between variables, specifically focusing on identifying mediating effect. Literally, the result we found through the regression analysis can be called causal relationship. However, as you pointed out, since there might be other elements that can influence present football spectatorship, we fully agree with your point that we overstated the findings. Therefore, our study removed the word ‘causal’. Instead, to reflect our findings based on the statistical analysis, we changed causal relation to relationship, influence, or correlation in the revised manuscript. Please see P1, L13 and P12, L415.

Introduction/Literature review:

• Line 60 requires clarification – what is meant by “consumed sustainability” in host nations. Consider revising this sentence.

Thanks for your comment. We tried to deliver the message of WC experience did affect present football spectatorship sustainably, one of the sport consumer behaviors. However, as you pointed out, this might cause some confusion. We removed it. Please see P2, L67.   

• Need to build the case for why spectatorship is an important outcome; beyond that it has yet to be examined in the literature. What value does this consumptive behavior have?

Thanks for your comment. One of the biggest reasons we picked up spectatorship as one of the key variables (outcome of SMEs) was first, spectatorship is one of the sport consumer behaviors in sport (participation and spectatorship), which can be influenced by outer force such as SMEs in terms of its motivation. Second, participation has been treated as expected outcomes from SMEs while spectatorship was treated as a motivation or an antecedent for SMEs. This is true. However, from sport consumer behaviors perspective, spectatorship behaviors can be a consequence of SMEs. Consequently, sport spectatorship can be one of the sport legacies left by SMEs in host countries together with participation, which will lead to reinforce or develop sport spectatorship culture, the heart of the sports industry. 

We reorganized the paper to support the value of spectatorship as outcomes of SMEs. Please see P1, L38~L47 and P3, L105~L132.

• Hypothesis 1 needs to be theoretically justified.

Thanks for your comment. In line with your previous comment right above, we have reorganized the paper by adding the rationale on justification of hypotheses 1. Please see P1, L38~47 and P3, L105~132.

• The theoretical/research framework needs to be re-written and better aligned with the hypothesis the authors’ outline. The research framework and each nostalgia component requires much more explanation/discussion up in the document.

Thank you for your kind advice. We have reorganized the paper. Please see re-written version of the paper, especially the Introduction, Literature Review and Discussion section.

• Line 146 – remove “him or her” and replace with “them.”

Thanks for your comment. We have revised it accordingly. Please see P4, L140.

• Sections 2.2., 2.3., and 2.4 need to be paired down and incorporated into one section. The sole focus of this section should be justifying hypothesis 2.1 – 2.5.

Thanks for your comment and we have merged three sections (2.2~2.4) into two, instead of one. We fully agree with your point that we should focus on justifying hypotheses we want to test, however, the memory, key source of nostalgia, can be two phases when it comes to how it is realized as nostalgia; one is individual memory and the other is collective memory. Each type of realization is important as it is connected with building personal identity and national identity respectively. Therefore, we integrated them into two sections. Please see P4, L139 ~ P5, L219.

• Hypothesis 3 needs theoretical justification.

Thanks for your comment.

The reason we examined the difference was South Korea and Japan has different socio-cultural background in terms of how football was developed, diffused, professionalized, and commercialized although association football (modern football) was introduced by British around same period in 19^th century. Also, since it’s cohosting events, for the first time in FIFA history, we thought that it is worth seeing how the impacts of the 2002 WC on spectatorship were different in each hosting country. We have added our rationale on cross-cultural approach to support H3 in introduction, methods, and discussion section, respectively. Please see P6, L250~L263.

• Line 276: Clarify what is meant by panel companies?

It’s the survey company that specialized in providing panel recruitment service. The reason we used a survey company was our sample was very niche respondents so that we looked for pool of respondents fitting our type of research. Please see P7, L268.

• Why were only adult males recruited to participate in the online survey? This is extremely concerning and calls into question the generalizability of the findings.  

Thanks for your comment. Initially we used present football participation as one of our control variables to find out how football spectatorship was influenced by the 2002 WC without considering football participation (the role of control variable in our hypotheses). We could get male participation, but couldn’t find the females’, especially, from Korean samples.

Before we built up the hypotheses, as backup data, we referred to each country’s official data (Sport White Papers, National Physical Activity Survey, and Sport Index) published by government agencies (e.g., Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Korea and Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan). Based on the data, overall female participation did exit before and after the 2002 World Cup, however, age segmentation was not implemented until recently. Moreover, recent data from 2016 National Physical Activity Survey in Korea shows, for example, female mass participation of age 30s and 40s were 0%.

Lastly, in terms of female mass football participation, the previous research referred to data from Sport White Papers and National Physical Activity Survey published by each governments’ agencies (i.e. Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Korea and Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan). Based on two countries’ data on amateur mass football participation, it was also difficult to find the female participation data before 2002. Specific gender segmentation in the reports was not included until recent years. Even in recent years data, for example, in 2016 National Physical Activity Survey published in Korea, amateur mass female football participation (amateur football club membership) rate of age 30s and 40s were 0%.

However, that does not mean female participation didn’t exist. Rather, the way we described in the previous paper might have caused some critical issues as you point out, therefore, to avoid this, we have added this issue on generalizability briefly in the Limitations and Future Research section. Please see P7, L270~L277 and P14, L525~L529.  

• Asking participants questions about viewership of an event 20 years ago can be challenging – How can we be sure your measures are valid and reliable? What previous research has employed similar approaches? Overall, I need more information and support for their retrospective approach to data collection. I’m not sure if it would be helpful, but I would have a review of the following paper: Looking Back in Time: The Pitfalls and Potential of Retrospective Methods in Leisure Studies: Leisure Sciences: Vol 32, No 4 (tandfonline.com)

Thank you for your comment. We fully agree with your point that asking questions about an event 20 years ago obviously causes some issue in terms of validity or reliability. However, what we found out from the literature review is that a landmark event such as Olympics or FIFA World Cup have remained relatively longer in memory of people than other events. Also, to avoid memory problem, when we were selecting respondents, we double-checked by adding screening questions to filter participants who did not recall well enough to answer our questions, plus we additionally provide information about the 2002 World Cup to bring memory back. Through the process, we are sure that our survey results are valid and reliable in terms of preventing memory issue of survey participants. Please see P7, L278~L289 on measures taken to get valid and reliable answers preventing memory problem.

• Please discuss how survey items modified from their original from in the LNS.

Thanks for your comment. The original version of Leisure Nostalgia Scale (LNS) is 5 factors with 33 items. We modified it according to our survey purpose by removing items not directly relevant to SMEs. Specifically, one of the factors, national identity (originally it was group identity) was modified by extending the scope of the meaning of “group” as the measurement scale of the present study was cross-cultural approach and our topic was SMEs, international competitions. This was explained in P6, L241~L246.  

• I do not think you can claim causality given your research design – please temper this language accordingly. Your design does not isolate the unique influence that watching the event had on the changes in spectatorship observed. There are too many confounding variables that might be at play here.

Thank you for your comment. We agree with your point. As we previously explained, we removed the term ‘causal’.

• Please remove p-value columns from tables and, instead, flag significant findings using (*) and provide an explanation of significance in the note under the table. I also believe the t-value and CI columns can be removed from the tables to improve readability.

Thanks for your comment. We have revised it accordingly. Please see Table 4 (P10~P11) and Table 5 (P11~P12).

Discussion:

• Given the findings are drawn from sample of all males; I am concerned about the generalizability of the study’s findings and management/theoretical implications. I challenge the authors to address this issue.

Thanks for your comment. As you previously commented, and we answered, there is a generalizability in our findings and conclusion. Specifically gender and age issues. We fully agree with your point. Following your comments, we have rewritten the wordings accordingly. Also, female spectatorship as cross-gender approach and age issues have been highlighted in the Limitation and Future Research section. Please see P14, L525~L540.

Appendix A:

• Several of the items are not grammatically correct and do not make contextual sense. Was this how the items appeared to participants?

This was not how it appeared in original versions (Korean and Japanese). Two versions were more sophisticated and in detail in terms of its writing. To avoid confusion, measurement scale items were revised by professional editors. Please see Appendix A.

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, the manuscript is well written and structured. The theoretical background is strong and provides necessary information to readers relevant to the topic. Before moving on to the next step, though, I’d like to ask the authors to consider the following comments.

1. Throughout the manuscript, please avoid using term “causal,” as the data were cross-sectional where the causal inference argument cannot be made.
2. Throughout the manuscript, please replace the word “behaviour changes,” as again the cross-sectional data cannot show “behavior change” but “correlation.”
3. In Introduction, please include information about how the authors defined SMEs in the study.
4. In Hypothesis 1, the independent variable is “the past 2002 World Cup experience.” In Figure 1, it is “the 2002 FIFA World Cup Experience.” And the title is “Sport Spectatorship.” Pease be consistent about what the focal independent variable is and use one language. I believe it is not sport spectating as one of the items asked whether people talked about the event with friends or family. Please choose one construct and provide a formal definition of it, otherwise it will be confusing to readers.
5. Please report the source of items for the past World Cup experience.
6. In addition to analyzing the measurement models of both South Korea and Japan separately, the authors should conduct an invariance test using both samples. Without ensuring the invariance of constructs between the samples, the interpretation of the group difference test might be biased.
7. Please report the results of the structural model using two samples combined.
8. In terms of the analysis of the two groups (Korea and Japan), I believe the PROCESS Model 4 was not used for it. Please explain how it was analyzed.

Author Response

Overall, the manuscript is well written and structured. The theoretical background is strong and provides necessary information to readers relevant to the topic. Before moving on to the next step, though, I’d like to ask the authors to consider the following comments.

At the outset, we would like to thank the all the reviewers for their conductive and helpful comments on our manuscript. The time and effort that we went into the reviewers is greatly appreciated.

We have given careful thought to all of your concerns and suggestions for improvement and have completed a revision that incorporates the issues raised in the reviews. We believe that the manuscript is significantly stronger now.

Once again, we are grateful for your insightful comments.

Following your comments and suggestions, we have reorganized the paper focusing on the most important elements needed for delivering the core message of our research.

1. Throughout the manuscript, please avoid using term “causal,” as the data were cross-sectional where the causal inference argument cannot be made.

Thank you for pointing this out. Our study initially aimed to find the relationship between the past World Cup experience and present spectatorship using multivariate regression analysis, Process Macro. This statistical program was supposed to test the causal relation between variables, specifically focusing on identifying mediating effect. Literally, the result we found through the regression analysis can be called causal relationship. However, as you pointed out, since there might be other elements that can influence present football spectatorship, we fully agree with your point that we overstated the findings. Therefore, our study removed the word ‘causal relationship’. Instead, to reflect our findings based on the statistical analysis, we changed causal relation to relationship, influence, or correlation in the revised manuscript.             

2. Throughout the manuscript, please replace the word “behaviour changes,” as again the cross-sectional data cannot show “behavior change” but “correlation.”

Well noted and thanks. We have removed the term “behaviour changes” following your comment. We have added alternative words to replace it. Please P5 L169, P5 L182, P7 L277, and P12 416

3. In Introduction, please include information about how the authors defined SMEs in the study.

Thanks for your comment. We have added the definition of SMEs. Please see P2, L90~L93.

4. In Hypothesis 1, the independent variable is “the past 2002 World Cup experience.” In Figure 1, it is “the 2002 FIFA World Cup Experience.” And the title is “Sport Spectatorship.” Pease be consistent about what the focal independent variable is and use one language. I believe it is not sport spectating as one of the items asked whether people talked about the event with friends or family. Please choose one construct and provide a formal definition of it, otherwise it will be confusing to readers.

Thanks for your comment. we use the term " the past World Cup experience" as our independent variable. Please see our comments and revision below for further notes on your comment. Thanks.

5. Please report the source of items for the past World Cup experience.

For our study, we have two constructs for examining the relationship between the past WC and present spectatorship: the past 2002 WC experience as antecedent, and present football spectatorship as consequence. ‘The past 2002 WC experience’ construct used as an antecedent was based on the combined version of two existing scales from Shamir & Ruskin (1984)’s spectatorship mode and Melnic and Wann (2010)’s fandom score. Main reason is the construct explained more than spectatorship itself; World Cup experience include not only spectating but also other activities relevant to spectatorship such as talking about the event with friends, family, and others (PWE1 and PWE2 in Appendix A). As you mentioned, spectating at venues was one of the items that should be included in the construct of the past 2002 WC experience. However, we didn’t include it because, compared to the other form of spectatorship (watching on media), the number of people who watched at venues were very small portion; most people experienced through watching the events on media. Please see P8, L310~L318

Shamir, B., & Ruskin, H. (1984). Sport participation vs. sport spectatorship: Two modes of leisure behavior. Journal of Leisure Research, 16(1), 9-21.

Melnick, M. J., & Wann, D. L. (2011). An examination of sport fandom in Australia: Socialization, team identification, and fan behavior. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 46(4), 456-470.

     6. In addition to analyzing the measurement models of both South Korea and           Japan separately, the authors should conduct an invariance test using both           samples. Without ensuring the invariance of constructs between the                       samples, the interpretation of the group difference test might be biased.

Thank you for the valuable comment. Following your comment, we tested the measurement invariance between South Korean and Japanese samples. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the two data sets. Thus, the measurement invariance between the two data sets was established. Details of the results were added to the manuscript. Please see P8, L349~P9,L356

7. Please report the results of the structural model using two samples combined.

Following your comment, we ran Hayes’ PROCESS macro model 4 using two samples combined (n = 824). The results indicated that the past World Cup experience had the significant and direct effects on all the five nostalgia factors, and had the significant and indirect effects of the present football spectatorship via two nostalgia factors (i.e., nostalgia as an experience, nostalgia as a personal identity). The above results make sense given the prior findings that in South Korea, the indirect effect via nostalgia as a personal identity was significant, while in Japan, the indirect effect via nostalgia as an experience was. Please see following table for the results.

We have attached the result of the combined structural model analysis.

8. In terms of the analysis of the two groups (Korea and Japan), I believe the PROCESS Model 4 was not used for it. Please explain how it was analyzed.

Thank you for the very important comment. We totally agree with what you pointed out. For examining the moderating effect, Model 7 or 8 should be employed. However, considering the fact that statistical analyses can strongly be affected by sample size (i.e., too many or too small) (Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2006), we were concerned about our too many samples (n = 824) when including two data sets.

For this reason, we believed that it could be better to analyse Model 4 for each country, then compare different mediation mechanisms through the nostalgia factors between the two countries. In accordance with this reason, we did tone down the comparison of the mediating chains between the two countries such as each country is more likely to have different mediating mechanisms, not the moderating of the nationality (of course, we did also tone down when interpreting the results: South Korea showed “Antecedent → Nostalgia as a personal identity → Consequence,” while Japan reported “Antecedent → Nostalgia as an experience → Consequence,” thus we concluded that two countries showed the different mediating mechanisms of the nostalgia factors, partially supporting the hypothesis).

Nevertheless, we knew that we only tested how the mediation mechanisms of the nostalgia factors were differed by the nationality, but did not its moderating effect. Therefore, we admitted this point in the limitation section not to make readers confused to interpret our results (please see page 15). As you pointed out, our analyses did not examine the moderating effect, but we would appreciate if you could evaluate this limitation with other values of this study.

We have added this in the Limitations and Future Research section. Please see P15, L563~570.

Reference

• • Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2006). Multivariate data analysis. Pearson Prentice Hall.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I think the paper has been significantly improved. I applaud the authors for their efforts in revising the manuscript. I have a few minor suggested revisions: 

1) Please consider revising the title to better reflect the variables involved in the mediation analysis: "Understanding relationships between past experience with a sport mega event and current spectatorship: The mediating role of nostalgia" Or something to this effect.

2) In your introduction, please outline some of the positive social psychological benefits of sport spectatorship - e.g., pride, social connections, wellbeing; etc (see Daniel Wann's work perhaps). 

3) Please be sure to explicitly state in your limitations that data on female football spectators was not available/collected.  

Author Response

I think the paper has been significantly improved. I applaud the authors for their efforts in revising the manuscript. I have a few minor suggested revisions: 

Thank you very much for your positive comments. Following your comments, we have reorganized the paper. 

1) Please consider revising the title to better reflect the variables involved in the mediation analysis: "Understanding relationships between past experience with a sport mega event and current spectatorship: The mediating role of nostalgia" Or something to this effect.

Thank you for your suggestion. We have changed the title. Please see P1, L2~L4

2) In your introduction, please outline some of the positive social psychological benefits of sport spectatorship - e.g., pride, social connections, wellbeing; etc (see Daniel Wann's work perhaps). 

Thank you for your comment. We have added psychological benefits of sport spectatorship. We have cited some papers done by Daniel Wann’s previous works and Funk’s work.

reference [11-13]

Wann, D.L.; Melnick, M.J.; Russell, G.W.; Pease, D.G. Sport fans: The psychology and social impact of spectators, 1st ed.; Routledge: New York, NY, USA, 2001; pp. 155–178.

Wann, D. L., Grieve, F. G., Zapalac, R. K., & Pease, D. G. (2008). Motivational Profiles of Sport Fans of Different Sports. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 17(1).

Funk, D. C., Mahony, D. F., & Ridinger, L. L. (2002). Characterizing consumer motivation as individual difference factors: Augmenting the sports interest inventory (SII) to explain level of spectator support. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 11(1).

Please see P1, L35 ~ L38.

3) Please be sure to explicitly state in your limitations that data on female football spectators was not available/collected.  

Thanks for your comment. We have clarified it in the Limitations and Future Research section. Please see P15, L535~L536

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate the authors' efforts to address my earlier comments. Most of them are well addressed. I have two minor comments.

1. For my comment #7, I actually asked the authors to report the results to the manuscript, not to me. So, please incorporate the results in the paper.
2. For the comment #8, if the authors didn’t actually see the group difference, I think my previous comment on the measurement invariance test is now irrelevant. But I would leave this the authors to decide to keep it or delete. Also, I would suggest to change the hypothesis 3 to research question.

 

Author Response

I appreciate the authors' efforts to address my earlier comments. Most of them are well addressed. I have two minor comments.

Thank you very much for your positive comments. Following your comments, we have reorganized the paper. 

1. For my comment #7, I actually asked the authors to report the results to the manuscript, not to me. So, please incorporate the results in the paper.

We are sorry for misunderstanding your point. We have added the result of consolidated samples. Please P10, L367~381 including Table 4.

2. For the comment #8, if the authors didn’t actually see the group difference, I think my previous comment on the measurement invariance test is now irrelevant. But I would leave this the authors to decide to keep it or delete. Also, I would suggest to change the hypothesis 3 to research question.

Thanks for your comment. Following your suggestion, we have removed the measurement invariance part. Also, we have changed the hypothesis 3 to research question. Please see P6, L264~266 and P12, L411~412.