Age and organizational identification: empirical findings from professional sports

ABSTRACT

Although identification is critical to organizational survival, knowledge on how identification changes and evolves over time is still limited. Not only can tastes and choices vary across both social context and time, but individuals can change or choose their identity, as well as their ideals, group loyalty and/or social category. Hence, in this letter, we examine the relation between organizational identification and age using five large sports consumer surveys as a snapshot of the age distribution of team identification. Our results provide evidence of robust U-shaped age profiles, with a probable turning point in the 40s.

KEYWORDS:

• Age
• basketball
• fans
• football/soccer
• organizational identification

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D10
• J10
• M30

Notes

¹ For a detailed discussion on team identification (i.e. ‘one’s level of attachment to, or concern about, a particular sports team’, see Madrigal (2001, 148), Ngan, Prendergast, and Tsang (2011, 552) and Wann and Branscombe (1993)) as a specific form of organizational identification, see, for example, Hoegele, Schmidt, and Torgler (2014a).

² The data on those spectators were explored in another context by Hoegele et al. (c.f. 2014a, 2014b, 2015).

³ At the time of survey, FCB, BVB, LEV, WOB and TSG had historically participated in 47 (ranked 1 in the All-time Fußball-Bundesliga table), 45 (5), 35 (11), 17 (21) and 6 (32) Bundesliga seasons, respectively.