Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar has been criticizedfor numerous social, political, and environmental issues.While an important call to boycott the tournamentspread worldwide, research has yet to document themotives underlying a boycott of such a mega sportingevent. We investigated fans' intentions to boycott the 2022FIFA World Cup in four countries of the Francophonieengaged in the World Cup (N = 1635). We found that beinghighly identified with the team and enjoying football foraesthetic pleasures predicted rejection of the boycott,while the most robust predictor of boycott intentionswas a concern for environmental issues. When assessingactual boycott behaviors among fans after the World Cup(N = 286), we found a significant decrease compared toboycott intentions. Importantly, this intention–behaviorgap was even more pronounced among politicized fanswith high awareness of social and environmental issueswho had initially planned to boycott the tournament.We discuss the paradox of calls to boycott mega sportingevents: Unlike other consumer products, these eventsoften have no alternatives, yet they are central to the socialidentity of sports fans. As a consequence, such a boycottmay be better explained by a low level of fandom ratherthan solely by strong political values, with remainingboycotters likely being those who had little interest in theevent from the outset. |
