The Effects of Professional Sports Team’s CSR Beneficiary Message Appeal on Team Loyalty

PURPOSE This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility PR message appeals employed by professional sports teams.METHODS The authors categorized message appeals into self-benefit inclusion and self-benefit exclusion, and evaluated their impact in both public and private evaluation contexts. A 2 (beneficiary message appeal: self-benefit inclusion vs. selfbenefit exclusion) × 2 (message evaluation: public vs private) design model was employed. Data were collected from 165 respondents at a major university in Korea and analyzed using SPSS version 20.0.RESULTS The findings revealed that team loyalty was higher among individuals exposed to self-benefit inclusion messages than those exposed to self-benefit exclusion messages. Additionally, an interaction effect was observed between beneficiary message appeal and message evaluation. Specifically, the self-benefit appeal message was more effective when individuals had lower public self-image concern, while the self-benefit exclusion message was more effective when public self-image concerns were higher.CONCLUSIONS Team loyalty was found to be significantly higher in private evaluation situations for self-benefit inclusion messages, whereas, for self-benefit exclusion messages, the impact of public evaluation situations on team loyalty was greater than in private evaluations.