A study of the effect of mascot attractiveness on attitudes toward sporting events

Although the significance of mascots has been demonstrated in numerous fields, studies specifically examining the pivotal role of mascots in sports marketing remain scarce. This study employed a mixed research approach to analyse the influence of sporting mascots on consumers' attitudes towards the event. Study 1 utilized online review data from social media platforms to construct perceived dimensions of sports event mascot attractiveness through LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic modeling. Study 2 (N = 400) employed structural equation modelling (SEM) to elucidate the primary effect of mascot attractiveness and the mediating role of sport event identification. The findings of this study substantiated the affective associations between mascots as a kind of event spokesperson and consumers' psychological mechanisms. Additionally, it was demonstrated that event impact, event expertise, mascot uniqueness, mascot anthropomorphism, mascot intimacy and mascot consistency all foster positive event attitudes among consumers.