An Analysis of Violence and Performance Factors’ Influence on National Hockey League Attendance
A Conceptual Analysis of Hedonic Consumption
Keywords:
National Hockey League, attendance, hedonic consumption, aggressive behaviorsAbstract
When evaluating the sport industry, hedonic motives lead individuals to be attracted to the actions of a particular sport or team. When individuals attend sports games, they tend to lose their inhibitions, escape the stresses of everyday life, or find immediate pleasure which are considered forms of hedonic motivation. Previous studies have indicated that fans choose to attend games due to expectations of good offensive and defensive performances. Additional studies have suggested that aggression in sports games may hedonically motivate spectators to attend because they find aggressive acts in sports pleasing and exciting. Thus, the purpose of this inferential study was to analyze whether elements of team offensive performance, defensive performance, or aggressive player actions hedonically motivated fans to attend NHL games between the 2010-2011 and 2019-2020 seasons. A hierarchal multiple regression analysis was performed to determine if the independent variables of wins, goals, minor and major penalties, game misconduct or fighting major could predict NHL attendance. The first block of the hierarchal analysis revealed that the model explained 7.4% of the variation in NHL attendance. However, only the factors of goals scored, and game misconduct revealed to be a significant influence on attendance. The second block of the hierarchal analysis revealed that the model represented 8.7% of the variation in attendance. The second block showed that only goals scored, and game misconduct directly influenced attendance. The results illustrated that hedonic reasons such as scoring a goal and game misconduct due to fighting motivated spectators to attend NHL games.References
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