THE IMPORTANCE OF COGNITION,
EVALUATION AND AFFECT


Michael Naylor
David Hedlund
Geoff Dickson

ABSTRACT

Fans’ psychological connection to teams has long been of interest to sport management scholars. The connection has been explored using the team identification construct, which is derived from theories of group identity conceived well before sport—specific management inquiry emerged. Similar to the more well established consumer knowledge construct which has been conceived as both uni-and multidimensional (Alba & Hutchinson, 1987), there is little consensus within the sport management literature regarding the dimensionality of team identification. Team identification has been operationalized as unidimensional (Branscombe & Wann, 1991; Wann & Branscombe, 1993), two-dimensional (Dimmock, Grove, & Eklund, 2005), six-dimensional (Heere & James, 2007), and most recently, a four-dimensional construct including two internal and two external themes (Lock, Taylor, Funk, & Darcy, 2012).

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