Understanding Emerging Adults’ National Attachments and Their Reactions to Athlete Activism

Abstract

Recently, striking numbers of U.S. professional athletes have protested social injustices during the customary pregame national anthem (e.g., not standing in protest to police brutality). Fans have met athletes’ protests with mixed reactions, thus calling into question whether fans’ national attachments might help explain their reactions. In this empirical study of emerging adults ( N = 514), we posit and find that disapproval of athlete activism is related significantly to overall national attachment. Decomposing national attachment into its respective subdimensions, we also find that fans’ disapproval relates most strongly to uncritical patriotism followed by national identity, symbolic patriotism, and constructive patriotism. Leveraging partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and importance-performance analyses, we offer a rare multifaceted look into how national attachments can shape fans’ reactions to athletes’ social protest behaviors.