Abstract

Purpose: The current study aims to gain a deeper understanding of fans of professional sports and the roles that emotional disposition and subjective happiness may have in forming customer satisfaction and future behavioral intentions with team identification as a moderator. Four significant relationships are examined in sports fans’ context: cognitive evaluations of satisfaction, happiness, future behavioral intentions, and the potential moderating effect of team-identification. Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was used to gather data from sports fans who attended a professional sporting event in the United States. Moderation analysis was used to explore the possible moderating effect of Team Identification between the cognitive and emotional variables on satisfaction with the experienced quality of services. Findings: The study’s findings indicate that satisfaction in sports fans is positively and significantly correlated with the physical environment, customer service, game day happiness, general happiness, and future behavioral intentions. However, significant differences were also found when team identification was used to moderate these relationships, especially regarding the fan’s emotional output. Originality/value: The originality of the article is based on the utilization of emotional disposition and how disposition impacts the cognitive evaluations of satisfaction, happiness, and future behavioral intentions while being moderated by team identification. Previous research has not engaged with the emotional disposition in the sports context. The study sheds light on how to best satisfy all consumers of the sports product and supports the continued use of emotional scaling when measuring sports fans’ behavior.