NBA stars' China tours and college students' sports consumption intention: the mediating role of perceived value.

This study examined the associations between selected cues encountered in the context of NBA stars' China tours and college students' sports consumption intention, and tested the hypothesized mediating role of perceived value. Drawing on Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this study constructed a mediation model in which information quality, players' professional achievements, and players' personal charisma were treated as antecedent variables, perceived value as the mediating variable, and sports consumption intention as the outcome variable. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted among 1,024 college students in Chongqing. Reliability and validity tests and Pearson correlation analysis were performed, followed by an integrated path analysis in AMOS 28.0 in which the three antecedent variables were entered simultaneously. Specific indirect associations through perceived value were evaluated using 5,000 bias-corrected bootstrap resamples. The results showed significant positive correlations among information quality, players' professional achievements, players' personal charisma, perceived value, and sports consumption intention. In the integrated model, information quality, players' professional achievements, and players' personal charisma were each positively associated with perceived value and sports consumption intention, while perceived value was positively associated with sports consumption intention. Significant indirect associations through perceived value were observed for information quality [B = 0.090, 95% BC CI (0.068, 0.115)], players' professional achievements [B = 0.126, 95% BC CI (0.089, 0.169)], and players' personal charisma [B = 0.183, 95% BC CI (0.128, 0.246)]. Demographic variables showed no significant differences in sports consumption intention. These findings suggest that perceived value mediates the associations between perceived tour-related attributes and sports consumption intention among the surveyed college students in Chongqing.