Media Effects Research Lab - Research Archive
Money, media, and college athletics:
Student Researcher(s)
Roger Van Scyoc (Masters Candidate);
Sika Wheeler (Masters Candidate);
Faculty Supervisor
NTRODUCTION
College athletics is a multi-billion dollar business. From tickets to games to cherished college hoodies, the dollars—and the corresponding media coverage—quickly add up. But the creators of the product on the field, the student-athletes, receive 0% of the total revenue. This study seeks to examine the effect of a specific frame, story type, on readers’ level of identification with the athletes and the NCAA in the debate on paying college athletes, as well as readers’ purchasing intent of associated merchandise.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
RQ1a: For young adults, controlling for age, income, perspective-taking, empathic concern, high school and college sports participation, and perceived issue importance, what is the relationship between story type and level of identification with college athletes?
RQ1b: What is the relationship between story type and level of identification with the NCAA?
RQ2: What is the relationship between level of identification and purchasing intent?
H1: Prior opposition to payment is negatively related to support for payment.
H2: The feature and op-ed stories (soft news) are significant predictors of purchasing intent for those who show low prior opposition to payment and sports involvement.
H3a: Higher identification with college athletes is positively related with purchasing intent of team merchandise.
H3b: Higher identification with college athletes is positively related with support for college athlete payment.
METHOD
The study employed a between subjects experimental design. A sample of 152 students was drawn from three undergraduate classes at Penn State University. Participants read and provided informed consent and then specified their level of sports involvement. Highly involved individuals were put in the control condition, while all others were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions (hard news, feature, and op-ed stories). Participants then proceeded through the rest of the questionnaire, answering questions measuring level of identification and purchasing intent of college athletics merchandise among others.
RESULTS
After running a bivariate analysis on the effect of prior opposition to athlete pay on level of support for a policy that would enforce pay, as prior opposition increased, support for payment decreased significantly (p < .0001, R2=0.46). Thus, H1 was supported. (See Figure 1.) Soft news (feature and op-ed) did not show to be significant predictors for purchasing intent of either athletic event (p =0.50) or memorabilia (p=0.21). However, the relationship approached significance when in regards to purchasing intent for apparel (p=0.05). Thus, H2 is not supported. The identification measurements did not show any significant relationships with athletic event (p=0.72), apparel (p=0.53), or memorabilia (p=0.20), therefore H3a and H3b were not supported. To check for identification as a mediator, the Baron and Kenny (1986) model was utilized. In order for identification with athletes to show true mediation between story type and purchasing intent or policy support, story type would first have to show significant variance for identification with athletes. Since no significance was found, identification cannot be regarded as a valid mediating variable between story type and either dependent variable.
CONCLUSION
For highly involved fans, prior opposition to paying college athletes makes little difference in the likelihood of purchasing college athletic apparel. It is for the consumers who show low sports involvement where prior attitudes make a difference. Marketers and colleges may not have to worry about significant media effects from negative coverage of the “pay for play” debate, particularly for avid sports fans. But for fair-weather or non-fans, media effects and prior attitudes may make more of a difference in predicting their overall purchasing intent.
No significant effects were found for the soft news stories, so no support was found for H2. Identification was not found to be a mediator in the current study, as the relationship between story type and identification with athletes was found to insignificant. While significance was found in the relationship between story type and identification with the NCAA, no significance was found between identification with the NCAA and purchasing intent. The Baron and Kenny (1986) model was used to assess mediation.
For more details regarding the study contact
Dr. S. Shyam Sundar by e-mail at sss12@psu.edu or by telephone at (814) 865-2173