Improving well-being through hedonic, eudaimonic, and social needs fulfillment in sport media consumption

Highlights

•	Sport media consumption leads to improved well-being through need fulfillment.
•	Well-being improves through hedonic need fulfillment.
•	Well-being improves through eudaimonic need fulfillment, if identified with the sport team.
•	Well-being improves through social need fulfillment, if the game is watched with others.

Abstract

Understanding sport consumer well-being is essential for enhancing the psychological experience and benefits of sport consumers. While watching a sporting event on TV or Internet is a key means of sport consumption, not much is known about the activity’s influence on well-being. Well-being improves when one’s hedonic, eudaimonic, and social needs are fulfilled. Need fulfillment occurs when hedonic, eudaimonic, and social values are experienced and perceived as one’s own. A pre-post survey and SEM-based research was conducted to examine individuals’ psychological experiences in sport event viewing and its link to well-being. The influences of the sport fanship and media consumption setting on the links were also examined. The results indicate that hedonic, eudaimonic, and social values experienced by sport event viewers fully or partially (moderated by sport fanship and media consumption setting) led to well-being improvement, supporting the notion of hedonic, eudaimonic, and social needs fulfillment as the mechanism of improving well-being in this context.

Keywords:

• Well-being
• Happiness
• Need fulfillment
• Hedonic need
• Social need
• Eudaimonic need