Comparison Between Various Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives Based on Spectators’ Attitudes and Attendance Intention for a Professional Baseball Franchise

The effects of different corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives-child and family, community relations, health and wellness, and environment protection-were compared in this study based on spectators’ attitudes toward a sports franchise and event attendance intention. A total of 354 spectators were recruited from the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) in Taiwan. A quasi-experimental design was used as the research design, and a one-way multivariate analysis of covariance was conducted for data analysis. The results of this study indicate that spectators perceive the environment protection initiative to be more persuasive in terms of the attitude of sports spectators toward sports franchises and event attendance intention than child and family and health and wellness initiatives. Additionally, community relation initiatives are perceived to be more effective than child and family initiatives in terms of consumers’ attitudes toward sports franchises and event attendance intention. This article contributes both theoretical and practical knowledge and implications to CSR studies pertaining to sports from an Asian perspective.

Introduction

The introduction discusses how Kansas City and Oakland sought to elevate themselves through big-league sports franchises and urban renewal. It relates the story of a controversial 1970 Oakland-Kansas City football game to illustrate what was at stake in the sports rivalry between the two cities. The introduction suggests that within cities and professional sports, there are always resentments, grievances, and competing agendas at play, and there are always winners and losers off the field as well as on. That is particularly true during historically fraught times when sports is seen as a key indicator of urban status and when many people reject a vision of “big-league” success that they feel disadvantages and disempowers them.

Does Prior NFL Head Coaching Experience Improve Team Performance?

Sports franchises often value prior head coaching experience as they evaluate head coaching candidates. This paper empirically tests whether prior head coaching experience affects team performance in the National Football League. Accounting for individual coach effects and other relevant factors, I find that team performance is significantly worse beyond a given coach’s initial head coaching spell. These results hold for a variety of outcome measures. While coaches with the lowest levels of success in their initial head coaching spell have the most pronounced negative experience effects, significant negative effects are estimated for coaches at all levels of initial success. One explanation for these results is that human capital acquired through head coaching experience is to a large extent firm specific, so while learning does occur within a given head coaching job, it does not carry over to future coaching spells. This can lead to an erosion of any relative human capital advantage.