Introduction: Consumer identification engenders benefits of increased loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, recommendations, and customer recruitment (Bhattarcharya & Sen, 2003). Sport, as a potent vehicle of symbolic representation (Chalip, 1992), is particularly conducive in building identity. Sport fans identification with sport teams influences the level of consumption and the likelihood to purchase from team sponsors (Madrigal, 2000). While the social nature of identity has been well acknowledged (James, 2001), little work has been done to study the effects of social embeddedness on fan identification. The social network paradigm treats the world as individuals embedded within structured systems of connections exerting profound influences on its members (Kilduff & Tsai, 2003). Sport fanship is often expressed through group activities (e.g, Fairley, 2003; McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig, 2002). This type of expression intricately relates to the account of one s personhood permeating daily communication (Giddens, 1984; Scott, Corman, & Cheney, 1998). In fact, social interactions among group members even shape consumption choices (Reingen, Foster, Brown, & Seidman, 1984). Both social and individual factors affect the relationship between social communication and fan identification. First, the extent to which members of a group share a given identity may determine the formation of the group (e.g., Fairley, 2003, McAlexander et al., 2002). Further, in a given sport fan social network, the network position an actor assumes affects his/her ability to exert influences on others through communication (Burt, 1992; Kalish & Robins, 2006). Finally, an actor s individual characteristics influence the formation of his/her social network, and the ability to influence others (Kilduff & Tsai, 2003). It was found that the extent to which a person sees oneself as part of an encompassing social relationship (i.e., the interdependent self view) was related to consumers brand preference for social communication (Arker & Schmitt, 2001). This study examines the relationships among social communication, network position, interdependent self view, and fan identity in the context of sport fans` ego networks where a social group is defined in terms of an ego and the alters who have direct social connections with the ego (Burt, 1992). Methods Thirty-one ego networks of fans of a major U.S. university`s athletic teams were studied. Ego`s (participant`s) fan identity was measured by using a composite identity measure (Shamir, 1992; Callero, 1985). The interdependent self view was measured by Triandis and Gelfand`s (1998) collectivism scale. In order to identify the ego network, name generators were provided to the participants (egos) to generate people (alters) in their social network. The egos then rated the relationships of each alter with every other alter in the ego network. The egos also reported their frequency of communication with each alter and their perception of the alter being fans of the university`s athletic team. Each ego network was submitted to Ucinet 6 (Borgatti, Everett & Freeman, 2002) to extract the constraint measure in order to gauge ego`s network position. HLM 6 software (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2000) was used to analyze the two-level data whereby variables associated with each alter (i.e., communication frequency, and alter fan identity) were level one variables and ego`s attributes (i.e., ego`s fan identity, ego`s network constraint measure, and ego`s interdependent self view) were level two variables. The level one regression equation specified alters` fan identity as the criterion and communication frequencies as predictor. Ego attributes were then added to the level two regressions to examine their effects on the relationship between communication frequencies and alter fan identity. Results On average, participants named 13 people in their ego network with a maximum of 20 and a minimum of 7 (SD=4). Ego`s average constraint measure was .25 (SD=.08) with the lowest as .15 and highest as .42. Results of HLM analyses showed that an ego`s fan identity significantly related to the average alter fan identity in the ego`s network (t (29)=2.379, p=0.024). It explained 7% of the variance of the average alter fan identity across ego networks. In other words, egos who formed stronger identification with the university`s athletic team considered alters in their network, on average, having higher fan identity. Both ego network constraint and interdependent view significantly affected the communication frequencies coefficients across ego networks (t=-3.024, p=0.006, and t=-2.574, p=0.016). The two variables explained 50% of the variance of the relationships between communication frequencies and alter fan identity. In order to explore the specific effects of the two variables on the communication frequencies slopes, six additional HLM analyses were conducted by varying the ego`s network position. Although some significant statistical effects were obtained, the results failed to render a coherent interpretation. Conclusions Findings of this study revealed a positive relationship between ego`s fan identity and the fan identities of alters in ego`s network. The study also detected some systematic relationships between communication frequency and ego`s perception of the alter fan identity. The statistical significance and the direction of these relationships were conditioned by both ego`s interdependent self view and network position. Nonetheless, these quantitative findings alone failed to pinpoint the interactions among the variables. In order to obtain a better understanding, future research, particularly ethnographic work that delineates sport fan social networks, is required. This study represented the very initial attempt to bring social network paradigm to the realm of sport consumer behavior. Although with limited success, it clearly illustrated the social effects on sport fan identification. As noted by Kilduff and Tsai`s (2003), "Human beings are by their very nature gregarious creatures, for whom relationships are defining elements of their identities and creativeness. The study of such relationships is therefore the study of human nature itself (p. 131)." Hopefully, social network analysis about sport fan identity will eventually enable us to generate new knowledge in this fascinating realm of social life.
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