An Athlete's Sense of Community as Responsibility for the Hometown: Perspective on Community-Based Professional Sport Organizations

Abstract

In Japan, community-based professional sports organizations, which are based in a speciˆc area referred to as a hometown, are increasing. This study focused on players from a team of professional independent Japanese baseball leagues and investigated how these players develop an``an``appropriate attitude for the hometown'' and fostered a ``sense of community as respon-sibility'' (SOC-R), a widely discussed construct in community psychology. The purpose of this study was to clarify the antecedents and consequences of players' SOC-R for the hometown. Current study constructed the SOC-R model that has``has``passion for the team activity'' and`` and``pride in the team'' as antecedents of SOC-R for the hometown, and``and``being a role model'' and`` and``maintaining a good relationship'' as consequences. The results of structural equation model-ing showed that``that``harmonious passion'', ``obsessive passion'', and``and``pride'' had a signiˆcant positive relationship with SOC-R, while SOC-R had a signiˆcantly positive in‰uence on``on``being a role model'' and``and``maintaining a good relationship''. As a result of multi-group analysis, it was suggested that the longer the player belongs to the team, the lower the in‰uence on the SOC-R from the obsessive passion, while the higher the in‰uence on the harmonious passion. These results contribute to the existing body of SOC-R and professional sports organization research, and may help sports managers better understand the psychological states of players from community-based professional sports teams.