Exploring the Relationship Between Trait Curiosity and Initial Interest in Sport Spectatorship

n the increasingly competitive sportmarketplace (Mahony & Howard,2001), sport marketers must workhard to attract and maintain the interestof sport fans. Even in some traditionallysuccessful sports, some teams and orga-nizations have struggled to be profitable(Mahony & Howard, 2001). Prior re-search has suggested that sport market-ers can increase their chances for successby appealing to the motives of sportfans. However, while many sport fanbehavior studies have focused on highlyidentified sport fans, little research hasinvestigated what factors initially attractone to consume sport.In 2001, Funk and James developed auseful conceptual framework, the Psy-chological Continuum Model (PCM),which helps in understanding the pro-gression of individuals’ psychologicalconnections to sports or sport teams.The PCM describes a fan's ascent froman initial sport consumer to a fiercelyloyal sport consumer. Through the inte-gration of research from disciplines suchas consumer behavior, marketing, soci-ology, and psychology, they developeda framework with four hierarchical lev-els: Awareness (when an individualknows that sports and teams exist, buts/he is not interested in following aparticular team), Attraction (when dis-tinct interest or initial attitude formationtoward a sport team has developed),Attachment (when the individual hasformed a meaningful psychologicalconnection to a team that is supportedby various attitude properties), and Al-legiance (when the individual's psy-chological connection became resistant,persistent, biased cognition and influ-ences behavior). Beyond references tothe socialization process, Funk andJames (2001) offered limited discussionon how individual processes create dis-tinct outcomes as one progresses up thehierarchy. In response to this limitation,Funk and James (2006) have developeda revised PCM to account for both proc-esses and stage-based hierarchical out-comes.