The Effect of Club Social Responsibility on the Supportive Behavior of the Football Fans Brand: (Case Study of Persepolis Tehran Club)

Abstract

Nowadays, social responsibility is not limited to specific organization, and clubs and sports teams have included various forms of social responsibility in their goals and are involved in their implementation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of club social responsibility on the supportive behavior of the brand of football fans with the mediating role of attitude: The moderator role was empathy. The method of the present study was descriptive-survey and was applied studies according to the purpose. In the present study, Persepolis Club as the study club and the statistical population of the present study consisted of all fans of Persepolis Club.360 people were selected as the research sample and the available sampling method was used. Galbraith (2010) questionnaire was used to evaluate social responsibility, Zhi et al. (2019) questionnaire was used to support brand behaviors, and Zhi et al. (2019) questionnaire was used to measure attitude and empathy variables.To review and analyze of the data, descriptive and inferential statistics were used using the construction equation model, which used SPSS 25 and Smart PLS 3.2.9 software for experiments and analysis. The results showed that social responsibility had an effect on brand support behaviors and fan attitudes, also,the attitude of the fans on the supportive behaviors of the brand was influential and the mediating role of the fans' attitude regarding the impact of social responsibility on the supportive behaviors was confirmed. Finally, empathy plays a moderating role between the impacts of club social responsibility on fan supportive behaviors. 1. Shahoo Zamani Dadaneh, (PhD Student) Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran. 2. * Mohammad Reza Esmaili, (Ph. D) Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran. moh.esmaili@iauctb.ac.ir 3. Ali Zarei, (Ph. D) Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran.