| The importance of the Internet to the success of sport organizations will continue to increase, making it essential to develop a better understanding of online sport consumption behavior. In order to understand online sport consumption behavior, theory based and comprehensive models need to be developed. To date, however, limited scholarly efforts have been made to examine sport consumers' adoption of sport-related websites. As a result, there is a lack of theoretical background that explains sport consumers' online decision-making processes.; Accordingly, the purpose of the present study was to develop a sport web acceptance model (SWAM) in which sport fans' decision-making processes regarding the use of sport-related websites are conceptualized. The proposed research model incorporated existing models of (a) the theory of reasoned action (TRA: Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), (b) the technology acceptance model (TAM: Davis, 1989), and (c) a conceptual framework that examined theoretical relationships among involvement, commitment, and loyalty (Iwasaki & Havitz, 2004). The SWAM includes eight constructs in order to predict sport fans' use of sport-related websites: (a) sport involvement, (b) psychological commitment to a team, (c) perceived ease of use, (d) perceived usefulness, (e) perceived enjoyment, (f) perceived trustworthiness, (g) intention to use a sport-related website, and (h) actual web usage behaviors.; Data analysis was conducted with 337 subjects who were enrolled at a large university in the Northwestern region. The psychometric properties of the SWAM were examined by conducting structural equation analyses. The measurement and the structural model fits were found to be acceptable. Hypothesis tests revealed that six of ten hypotheses were supported. A competing model was provided in order to examine the effects of sport fans' beliefs as mediating variables between sport-specific constructs, and behavioral intention and use. The analyses of the competing model revealed that perceived ease of use, usefulness, enjoyment, and trustworthiness can become potential mediating variables. In addition, moderating effects of hedonic and utilitarian groups and gender on the SWAM were examined. The SWAM is invariant across gender but showed different path coefficients across hedonic and utilitarian groups. Academic and practical implications and recommendations for future research were provided. |
