The Importance of a Charitable Cause in Motivation for Participation in a Sport Event

Abstract

Charity sport events have emerged as widespread and critical fundraising mechanisms for charitable organisations. This research examines the meaning participants hold for charity sport events, and the factors that underlie this meaning. The growth in popularity of charity sport events has resulted from the popularity of sport; an overall increase in giving to charity, including record highs in individual donations; and a post-materialist shift in consumer attitudes towards the products and services with which they align. As charity sport events continue to grow, challenges emerge for sport and event managers to develop sustainable events from which participants can derive not only enjoyment, but meaning. The purpose of this research is to delve into the meaning participants hold for charity sport events through an examination of participant attachment to the event, and the factors and processes that contribute to this meaning. In making this examination, the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) is employed as the theoretical framework as it is adaptive to different contexts, stage-based, and accounts for attitudinal change across these stages. The PCM suggests three processes facilitate movement up and down among the stages of awareness, attraction, attachment, and allegiance. Prominent within this framework, a discussion of attachment suggests that the outcomes satisfied at the attraction level may align with an individual’s values. This alignment then leads to the event taking on emotional, symbolic, and functional meaning. This research advances recreation motives and motives for charitable giving as needs satisfied and benefits obtained through charity sport event participation. These motives interact with one another, as well as with values, leading to attachment to the event. This research determined the relative influence of these motives and values, while exploring their interaction. To make this determination, five studies were conducted. First, Study 1 involved four focus groups (N=31) to uncover the motives driving event participation and investigate their contribution to event attachment. Second, Study 2 employed a pre-event questionnaire (N=186) to provide pilot data designed to test the motives uncovered within the focus groups, while determining each motive’s relative contribution to attachment to a charity sport event...