Blackballed: An Empirical Examination of the Impact of Race, Gender, and Identity on the Sports Image Repair Process

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dc.contributorBillings, Andrew C
dc.contributorAllaway, Arthur W
dc.contributorParrott, Michael S
dc.contributorVandyke, Matthew S
dc.contributor.advisorBrown, Kenon A.
dc.contributor.authorRush, Stephen Wesley
dc.contributor.otherUniversity of Alabama Tuscaloosa
dc.date.accessioned2022-04-13T20:34:01Z
dc.date.available2022-04-13T20:34:01Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.descriptionElectronic Thesis or Dissertationen_US
dc.description.abstractThe spectacle of sports in America has consistently been shown to be a financial powerhouse (PwC, 2019). However, when there is a huge potential for financial gain, there also comes the risk of a huge potential financial loss. When athletes commit an act that is deemed offensive or inappropriate, there is the possibility to incur millions of dollars in lost revenue (Rishe, 2016). So, understanding the most successful way at safeguarding or repairing the image of an athlete is important. However, the image repair process is not as simple as it may seem. Therefore, this dissertation empirically investigated how one’s own identity influenced their reactions to the athlete image repair process. Using both Social Identity Theory and Image Repair Theory, this study explored how better understanding the identity of an audience could also lead to better understanding of the success of image repair strategies. A national sample of 368 individuals participated in an online posttest only experiment. During the experiment, participants were randomly assigned to view one of eight message conditions. Following this, participants responded to a series of questions assessing account acceptability, athlete likeability, likelihood to repeat the act, willingness to share negative word of mouth (nWOM), role model perceptions, and supportive behavior of the athlete. Results supported previous IRT literature in showing the mortification strategy to be the most successful strategy at repairing an athlete’s image, Black participants actually rated athletes that used the denial strategy to be more likeable. Race was also seen to be a strong indicator for how each race condition viewed the athlete in terms of likelihood to repeat the act with White participants believing that the athlete in question was more likely to repeat the act than Black participants or Other participants. White participants also showed slight in-group favoritism towards the White athlete. Another interesting finding was that White participants were more likely to share negative word of mouth about a White athlete regardless of response strategy used and regardless of gender. When looking at how gender impacted the image repair process, it was found that overall, male participants were more likely to accept the account of female athletes, consider female athletes to be more likeable than the male athletes, and believe female athletes were less likely to recommit the crime.en_US
dc.format.mediumelectronic
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.otherhttp://purl.lib.ua.edu/182083
dc.identifier.otheru0015_0000001_0004236
dc.identifier.otherRush_alatus_0004D_14226
dc.identifier.urihttps://ir.ua.edu/handle/123456789/8415
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Alabama Libraries
dc.relation.hasversionborn digital
dc.relation.ispartofThe University of Alabama Electronic Theses and Dissertations
dc.relation.ispartofThe University of Alabama Libraries Digital Collections
dc.rightsAll rights reserved by the author unless otherwise indicated.en_US
dc.subjectCrisis Communication
dc.subjectExperimental Design
dc.subjectImage repair
dc.subjectImage Repair Theory
dc.subjectSocial Identity Theory
dc.subjectSports Public Relations
dc.titleBlackballed: An Empirical Examination of the Impact of Race, Gender, and Identity on the Sports Image Repair Processen_US
dc.typethesis
dc.typetext
etdms.degree.departmentUniversity of Alabama. College of Communication and Information Sciences
etdms.degree.disciplineMass communication
etdms.degree.grantorThe University of Alabama
etdms.degree.leveldoctoral
etdms.degree.namePh.D.

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