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Failure By A Rival Team Must In Some Way Reflect Positively

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failure by a rival team must in some way reflect positively on the individuals and their favorite team. This also suggests that indirect competition (i.e., not direct competition against the favorite team) is present in order for someone to experience GORFing. For example, the rival team must experience some form of failure separately from the favorite team that can reflect positively on the individual and collective identity in a fan’s mind. Finally, it is important to note that GORFing can occur independent of the performance by an in-group (i.e., favorite team). For example, a fan can watch their favorite team win a contest and simultaneously take joy when a third team defeats their biggest rival. The phenomenon of GORFing was …show more content…

Figure 1 presents the conceptual framework of this study, which identifies fan perceptions of a rival team as determinants of GORFing, which, in turn, affects fans’ likelihood to consume favorite team merchandise when the rival team loses to a third, comparable team. This framework proposes that the outcome examined, intention to consume favorite team merchandise, is influenced by rival perceptions through the mediation of GORFing. First, it is important to quantitatively show that the GORFing is a distinctive construct from factors constituting rival perceptions (Havard, Gray et al., 2013). The following hypothesis is offered: H3: GORFing will display distinct psychometric properties from rival team perceptions. (INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE) Once GORFing is shown to be a distinct psychometric measure from OIC, SoS, OP, and OS, the next step is to examine (a) how it is influenced by rival perceptions, and (b) how it influences a fan outcome. Because research shows that the facets of rivalry can influence a fan’s consumption likelihood (Havard et al., 2016), it also makes sense that rival perceptions can influence fan reactions such as GORFing. Therefore, the following hypothesis is offered to examine the influence of rival perceptions on fan likelihood of experiencing GORFing: H4: OIC (H4a), SoS (H4b), OP (H4c), and OS (H4d) will significantly impact

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