Date of Award
8-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management
Committee Chair/Advisor
Charles Chancellor
Committee Member
Lauren Duffy
Committee Member
Theresa Melton
Committee Member
Eunhye Grace Kim
Abstract
Sport events provide unique experiential environments that can significantly influence attendee well-being through social interaction, shared emotions, and meaningful experiences (Hardin, 2013; Inoue et al., 2017; Warner & Dixon, 2013). However, previous research has primarily focused on satisfaction and service quality outcomes (Lee et al., 2015; Prayag et al., 2018), with limited understanding of how specific experiential dimensions contribute to subjective well-being through emotional pathways. While recent studies have begun exploring connections between sport events and well-being (Armbrecht & Andersson, 2020; Nicole Yu et al., 2022; Tang et al., 2020), gaps remain in understanding the mechanisms through which experiential environments influence well-being outcomes, particularly in collegiate sport contexts.
This dissertation explores how Clemson football gameday experiences influence attendee subjective well-being through a sequential exploratory mixed-methods approach (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2017) grounded in Experienscape (Pizam & Tasci, 2019) and Stimulus-Organism-Response (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) theoretical frameworks. The central research question, "How do Clemson football gameday experiences impact subjective well-being?" guided a comprehensive three-phase research design that bridges qualitative exploration with quantitative validation.
Phase one employed qualitative interviews to identify experiences characteristic of college football gamedays and examine how these experiences shape attendees' subjective well-being. Eleven themes emerged across environmental, emotional, and well-being categories, including social interaction, natural campus aesthetics, cultural traditions, sensory elements, functional aspects, and hospitality culture as environmental stimuli, alongside collective emotion, identity/pride, memory/nostalgia, and sense of community as mediators of the affective dimension.
Phase two utilized a modified Delphi approach with expert participants to validate and refine the proposed conceptual model derived from the Phase One findings. Expert consensus repositioned collective emotion from environmental stimulus to organismic mediator, clarified identity and pride as separate constructs, and validated the six-dimensional Experienscape structure for collegiate sport contexts, providing theoretical validation for quantitative testing.
Phase three quantitatively tested the expert-validated model using Structural Equation Modeling with gameday attendees. Results demonstrated that experiences significantly impact well-being both directly (β = 0.435, p < .01) and through emotional mediators, with pride emerging as the strongest mediator (β = 0.180, p < .01), followed by collective emotion (β = 0.150, p < .05), while memory showed a significant effect on experiences (β = 1.047, p < .01), it had no significant effect on well-being.
This research extends sport event experience frameworks by empirically validating collective emotion as a primary mechanism linking experiential environments to well-being outcomes. The findings demonstrate that attendee well-being emerges through shared emotions and institutional pride, providing universities and event managers with evidence-based strategies for enhancing attendee experiences through comprehensive environmental design that fosters collective emotional experiences.
Recommended Citation
Park, Sunwoo, "How the Experienscape Influences Attendees’ Subjective Well-Being in a College Football Event" (2025). All Dissertations. 4082.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/4082
Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0001-7700-7209