1012955

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JMQXXX10.1177/10776990211012955Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyWang and Lewis

Original Article
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

How Do Moral Values and

1­–21
© 2021 AEJMC
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DOI: 10.1177/10776990211012955
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Evaluations and Support

of Sports Organizations
Post-Crisis?

Rong Wang1 and Nicky Lewis1

Abstract
This study examines how the moral values individuals possess and organizational
crisis response strategies influence sports organizations. It showed that two moral
foundations (fairness and purity/sanctity) had positive effects on moral outrage
while care had a negative effect. When predicting team reputation, only one moral
foundation (care) had a positive effect while the crisis response strategy had no effect.
Furthermore, reputation had a positive effect on support intention, while both moral
outrage and crisis response strategies had no effect. Implications were provided on
what factors could function as effective buffers to prevent potential damages.

Keywords
moral foundations, moral outrage, image repair, sport crisis

Crisis refers to “the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important

expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance
and generate negative outcomes” (Coombs, 2014, p. 2). As a growing area of research,
the literature on sports crisis communication has focused on understanding how sports
organizations respond to scandals to repair their damaged reputations (Meng & Pan,
2013; Richards et al., 2017). A subset of this research examines how stakeholders

1
University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA

Corresponding Author:
Rong Wang, Department of Communication, College of Communication and Information, University of
Kentucky, 343 South Martin Luther King Blvd., Lexington, KY 40506, USA.
Email: rong.wang@uky.edu
2 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

(e.g., sports consumers) experience buffering effects (L’Etang, 2013; Stoldt et al.,
2012). Buffering effects prevent those who already think highly of a sports organiza-
tion from assuming the worst when a scandal arises (Coombs, 2014). Indeed, as
Koerber and Zabara (2017, p. 194) pointed out, “few crises in sports deal enough dam-
age to images to reach the level of a significant threat to ticket or merchandise sales.”
In some cases, allied fans stand by the sports organization that faced a scandal (and its
leader), show solidarity, and even attack the source of the crisis message (e.g., N.
Brown & Billings, 2013). This line of research calls for further examination of what
comes between the crisis and its effects on stakeholders (clients, customers, citizens,
and fans) and the organization (team owners, coaches, and players), which can provide
important implications regarding crisis planning, prevention, and response. In other
words, what factors could function as effective buffers that would influence the man-
agement of a sports crisis?
Several factors have previously been examined as buffers in sports crisis commu-
nication, including community relationships, crisis history, and existing favorable
reputation (Coombs, 2014; Stoldt et al., 2012). More recent literature has shown that
individual-level differences such as fan identification and team loyalty may offer func-
tion as buffers (Brown et al., 2013; L’Etang, 2013). The effects of these buffers have
been primarily tested with one particular outcome, that is, perceived reputation. This
study takes a distinct approach to examine sports crises through the moral lens and
investigate what buffers influence both reputation damage and support sports organi-
zations would receive from the community. Guided by Moral Foundations Theory
(MFT; Haidt & Joseph, 2004) and Image Repair Theory (IRT; Benoit, 1997), this
study has two goals. First, it examines how individual consumers’ moral values and
sports organizations’ crisis response strategies influence perceived organizational rep-
utation post-crisis. Second, it unpacks how moral salience and crisis response strate-
gies could influence individuals’ intention to provide monetary and nonmonetary
support to the sports organization that experienced a crisis.
Literature shows that sports have a moral component and fans can moralize sports
situations (Cottingham, 2012; Lewis & Hirt, 2019). When a sports crisis (e.g., viola-
tion of rules) occurs, the moral foundations individuals possess could influence how
they respond to the crisis and the sports organization. In particular, if individuals view
a crisis as violating norms they believe in, the moralization may trigger fans’ emotions
toward the sports organization and negatively impact their attitude and behavioral
intentions toward the organization. Integrating MFT and IRT allows us to unpack how
individuals’ moral foundations influence their evaluations of different types of sports
crisis responses and their willingness to attend future games of the sports organization
in question, among other behavioral outcomes.

Literature Review
Seeing Sports Crises Through a Moral Lens
Sports are an important part of many individuals’ lives. Following sports is an
extremely popular leisure activity (Nielsen, 2018; van Driel et al., 2019) and evidence
Wang and Lewis 3

suggests there is a strong moral component to sports consumption (Cottingham, 2012).

Broadly speaking, individuals often moralize situations in daily life (Hofmann et al.,
2014) and the sports domain is no exception. Raney (2011) made the connection
between viewer morality and sports media consumption using disposition-based theo-
ries of entertainment (Raney, 2006; Zillmann, 1996). Disposition-based theories pro-
pose that audiences should be pleased when good things happen to good characters
and bad things happen to bad characters. Furthermore, audiences should be displeased
when bad things happen to good or neutral characters and good things happen to bad
characters. Disposition is particularly informative in the context of sports spectator-
ship (Zillmann & Bryant, 1994), where favored athletes and teams comprise the “good
characters” and disfavored athletes and teams comprise the “bad characters.”
Raney (2011) also proposed that audience evaluations of “good” athletes/teams and
“bad” athletes/teams are grounded in morality (e.g., seeing one’s favorite team as mor-
ally superior to others). Additional evidence suggests that sports audiences respond in
moral ways to norm violators or those who have derogated against their favored team
(Lewis & Hirt, 2019). These responses are largely dependent on their allegiance to the
sport, team, or athletes involved (Branscombe & Wann, 1991). Sports fanship is highly
associated with loyalty (Winegard & Deaner, 2010) and ingroup loyalty is one of the
five moral foundations outlined in MFT (Haidt & Joseph, 2004). MFT identifies sev-
eral distinct and pervasive psychological systems that exist among individuals and
societies, which vary in their salience. These five foundations include care, fairness,
ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Moral foundations have evolu-
tionary roots and originally served humans to meet adaptive challenges (e.g., protec-
tion of children, building partnerships and coalitions) (Bowe, 2018; Graham et al.,
2013). Today, moral foundations can serve to evaluate situations in everyday life,
which include sports. The connection between ingroup/loyalty and sports fanship is
logical, but the other foundations should be influential in a sports context as well: care
to nurture and protect one’s connection to a favored player/team, fairness to preserve
what is right and morally just within the confines of the sport (e.g., following the
rules), authority and respect toward the favored team’s leadership (e.g., owners, man-
agers, coaches), and sanctity to maintain the sacredness and importance of the player/
team in one’s life. These moral codes (as applied to the sports domain) should influ-
ence the way audiences cognitively and emotionally respond to sports media content,
including their perceptions of sports organizations.
In a similar vein, Tetlock et al. (2000) developed the Sacred Values Protection
Model (SVPM), which suggests that any violation against one’s identified organiza-
tion is likely to elicit a retributive response. One of these key retributive responses is
moral outrage. Moral outrage is a highly emotional and angered response that func-
tions to disparage and punish the source responsible for violating the sacred values of
the organization while also reinforcing the importance of the sacred values within the
group. This response makes clear what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior
(Tetlock, 2003). Moral outrage is a cognitive, affective, and behavioral rejection of
those who violate the norms of the group. In this sense, MFT (Haidt & Joseph, 2004)
outlines the specific foundations that inform the evaluation of a violation, while the
4 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

SVPM serves to explain the response to the violation (e.g., Bulbulia et al., 2013). As
mentioned above (Lewis & Hirt, 2019), sports media consumers can experience moral
outrage when their favored organization is violated in some way (e.g., when reading a
news article that is critical or disparaging of the coach and/or team), but it is unknown
whether individuals experience moral outrage when the violation comes from within
the organization (e.g., the coach and/or team break the rules). These internal viola-
tions, especially when they become public, are often termed “sports crises” or “sports
scandals.”
Crises are socially constructed and moral outrage has been viewed as critical to the
construction (Coombs & Tachkova, 2019). The moral foundations of sports media
consumers likely influence how they respond to norm violations, such as those that
occur during sports crises. Their responses would include moral outrage and percep-
tion of the sports organization experiencing the crisis. Furthermore, moral outrage
could lead to negative outcomes to organizations such as damaged reputations
(Coombs & Tachkova, 2019; Fediuk et al., 2010). Accordingly, the following hypoth-
eses are presented:

H1: The relative salience of moral foundations will influence moral outrage
responses.
H2: The relative salience of moral foundations will influence perceptions of the
organization’s reputation.
H3: Moral outrage will influence perceptions of the organization’s reputation.

IRT and Sports Crisis

IRT is a comprehensive theory to describe how an organization responds to a crisis
when its reputation is under attack. According to Benoit (1997), an attack prompts a
strategic response when the accused is believed to be responsible for an offensive act.
It is also noted that in crises, perceptions are more important than reality, which thus
calls for careful crafting of response messages to repair an organization’s damaged
reputation. Therefore, IRT is built upon the key assumption that maintaining a favor-
able image is a key goal of communication for organizations facing a crisis. Image is
defined as “the perception(s) of a person, group or organization held by the audience,
shaped by the words and actions of that person, as well as by the discourse and behav-
ior of other relevant actors” (Benoit & Hanczor, 1994, p. 40). A typology of five pri-
mary crisis response strategies was proposed in IRT: denial, evading responsibility,
reducing offensiveness, corrective action, and mortification (Benoit, 1995, 1997).
Benoit (2018) acknowledges that sports offer a unique setting to test IRT due to its
entertainment-based context and the celebrity-like status athletes enjoy. The applica-
tion of IRT in sport settings has taken on both a qualitative approach (such as case
study and discourse analysis) and a quantitative approach (such as experiment and
survey) to describe how individual athletes, sports organizations, and leagues used
different response strategies to frame their messages in response to a crisis and to
repair their reputation (Billings et al., 2018; Blaney, 2015). For example, Onwumechili
Wang and Lewis 5

and Bedeau (2017) analyzed the corruption crisis FIFA experienced in 2015 with con-
tent-coding of news coverages. They found that FIFA used evading responsibility
strategy while promising corrective action, which turned out to be ineffective. Another
example is Smith and Keeven’s (2019) analysis of the NFL commissioner’s response
after Ray Rice domestic abuse crisis. They used discourse analysis to suggest that the
combination of evading responsibility strategy, corrective action, and mortification
strategies was used to create a separation between the accused athlete and NFL. Based
on media opinions and polling data, the authors argued that these strategies were inef-
fective in convincing the general public.
Additional research has been conducted to analyze user data and directly evaluate
the effectiveness of these crisis response strategies in the sports domain. Frederick
et al. (2021) analyzed Michigan State University’s (MSU) response after the Larry
Nassar sex abuse scandal. With data collected from users’ postings and comments on
Facebook, they evaluated how social media users viewed MSU’s corrective action
strategy which was used along with rallying, bolstering, and mortification. They con-
cluded that users did not respond to MSU’s strategies positively. They also argued
that corrective action was a necessary tactic in crisis response while evading respon-
sibility was ineffective. Furthermore, sport communication scholars have also used
fictitious athlete names and crisis scenarios to evaluate how different response strate-
gies may affect athletes’ reputations. They found that mortification was the most
effective strategy compared to reducing offensiveness and evading responsibility
after controlling for athletes’ demographics (K. A. Brown, Billings, & Devlin, 2016;
K. A. Brown et al., 2015).
The current study focuses on two specific strategies: reducing offensiveness and
corrective action for the following reasons. First, existing literature has achieved con-
sensus regarding the effectiveness of the other three strategies. In particular, denial is
viewed as least effective unless the accused can provide credible evidence to show that
they are not responsible or to shift blame to another party (Coombs, 2014). Evading
responsibility only works when the accused cannot deny the accusation and only helps
to reduce the blame (K. A. Brown et al., 2015). Mortification is the most effective in
image repair as the accused shows a sincere admittance of guilt. Second, corrective
action and reducing offensiveness show distinctive differences in an organization’s
tactics in responding to a crisis. Corrective action communicates a plan to repair the
situation and to prevent the recurrence while reducing offensiveness admits the culpa-
bility but tries to downplay the perceived offensiveness of the act (Benoit, 1997).
Third, literature has shown that corrective action is more effective than reducing
offensiveness in repairing organizational reputation (Caldiero et al., 2009; Compton &
Compton, 2014). Coombs and Tachkova (2019) suggest that organizations should
engage in corrective action with moral recognition which would have long-term impli-
cations on image repair. However, we know little regarding whether the distinct differ-
ence may still demonstrate if individual-level differences are accounted for.
Investigating how these two unique strategies may trigger an individual’s moral reac-
tions could further uncover their different effects on sports fans. In the context of
sports crisis, we argue that corrective action will signal a higher commitment in
6 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

correcting the wrong, compared to reducing offensiveness. To capture the effects of

these crisis responses, we propose,

H4: The use of corrective action strategy by sports organizations will lead to a bet-
ter reputation compared to the use of reducing offensiveness strategy.

Crisis Response, Moral Salience, and Organizational Support

Recent literature shows that crisis response strategies could further influence organiza-
tional support a team may receive from the general public, which takes the testing of
IRT beyond reputation perception (K. A. Brown, Anderson, & Dickhaus, 2016). Sports
teams value the support they could receive from local communities and fans (Koerber
& Zabara, 2017). Such support moves beyond the purchase of a game ticket or mer-
chandise goods. For example, professional teams set up community funds that ask for
donations from the surrounding community. Collegiate teams have booster programs
that do the same. In addition, collegiate teams often have alumni groups that are run by
volunteers and rely on donations to operate. Therefore, organizational support toward a
sports team could take both monetary and nonmonetary forms. We propose,

H5: Sports organizations’ crisis response will influence individuals’ intention to

support them.

Existing literature on IRT suggests that when evaluating the effectiveness of crisis
responses, individual differences need to be accounted for. Sports crisis communica-
tion scholars have examined how certain factors could function as effective buffers,
for example, the existing reputation of a team, and team loyalty (Koerber & Zabara,
2017; L’Etang, 2013). Furthermore, they showcased that highly identified sports fans
are more likely to support their teams during a crisis (Brown et al., 2013). All the find-
ings suggest that individual-level differences could further unpack under what condi-
tions the buffering effect of strategic crisis response could take place. We thus integrate
IRT and MFT to argue that a sports organization’s reputation and moral outrage could
influence individuals’ support intentions.
The key assumption in IRT is that maintaining a favorable image is a fundamental
goal for organizations facing a crisis (Benoit, 1997). During a sports crisis, individuals
who possess a more favorable perception of the team are more likely to remain sup-
portive (Brown et al., 2013). In other words, an existing good reputation provides a
buffering effect. Thus we propose,

H6: Sports organizations’ reputation will influence individuals’ intention to support

them.

Given that sports have a moral component and fans can moralize sports crises, we
argue that the moral outrage could also influence how they respond to the crisis and
Wang and Lewis 7

the sports organization. Existing literature has demonstrated that the use of moral
foundations in message framing can significantly affect the general public’s support of
an organization or a cause (Bowe, 2018). In particular, Coombs and Tachkova (2019)
suggested that when organizations respond to a crisis, moral recognition should be
incorporated in their messages to create a foundation for recovery. Furthermore, Shim
et al. (2021) found evidence that certain moral foundations (care/harm; fairness/reci-
procity) were associated with strong intentions to boycott an organization after a crisis.
Although the organization assessed in that study was a fictional fashion conglomerate,
the relationship between moral outrage and organizational support should play out
similarly here. Therefore, we argue that increased moral outrage would be associated
with less support for a sports organization involved in a crisis. As such, the following
hypothesis is proposed:

H7: Moral outrage will influence individuals’ intention to support a sports organi-
zation post a crisis.

Method
Participants, Design, and Procedure
Data were collected from a large Southeastern public university in the United States.
Undergraduate students (N = 473) completed this study in exchange for course
credit and all study procedures were approved by an institutional review board. The
sample was mostly White (82%) and generally split between males (49%) and
females (51%). One participant did not report their gender. Age ranged from 18 to
32 (M = 19.70, SD = 1.73).
Students received an invitation with a short description of the study, information
about confidentiality and incentives, and a link to the survey hosted on Qualtrics.
com. All respondents were randomly assigned to a 2 × 2 experimental design. The
two factors included the following: two sports teams (men’s professional football
team in the same geographic region as the university where the study was conducted
[within 90 miles]; men’s football team at the university where the study was con-
ducted) and two types of crisis response strategies from IRT (reducing offensiveness;
corrective action; Benoit, 1997). Each participant was thus randomly assigned to one
of these four conditions. The participants were given a fictional scenario of the orga-
nization being accused of a violation and then shown a fictionalized news story from
CBSSports.com, which detailed how the organization responded to the crisis through
messaging from the coach of the team. The violation scenario involved a team staff
member using a cell phone to record the walkthrough at a rival team’s practice. After
they read the news article and an attention check item, they were asked about their
perceptions of the organization’s response along with other several outcome mea-
sures. Finally, demographic information was reported and participants were thanked
for their participation.
8 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

Measures
Moral foundations. The 30-item Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ; Graham
et al., 2009) measured participants’ moral values and included five subscales: care (M
= 4.64, SD = 0.74), fairness (M = 4.55, SD = 0.67), ingroup/loyalty (M = 4.02, SD
= 0.83), authority/respect (M = 4.22, SD = 0.75), and purity/sanctity (M = 3.65, SD
= 0.86). Items were answered on a 6-point Likert-type type scale and ratings for each
subscale were summed and averaged. Cronbach’s alpha for each factor is reported as
follows: care (α = .64), fairness (α = .63), ingroup/loyalty (α = .68), authority/
respect (α = .63), and purity/sanctity (α = .67). The alpha scores reported here were
consistent with the reliability threshold reported in existing literature which was below
.70 (Lewis & Hirt, 2019; Shim et al., 2021).

Moral outrage. A series of moral outrage items were used to assess angered reactions
toward the organization after the norm violation (Lewis & Hirt, 2019). These 17 items
were answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (Not at All) to 5
(Extremely). Participants were asked how they felt toward the organization after read-
ing the news article; several of the emotions assessed included anger, disgust, and
condemnation. Additional items asked how much participants were offended by the
arguments made by the organization and how much participants thought the organiza-
tion should be condemned for its opinions. Items were combined and averaged for this
measure (M = 2.60, SD = 0.69). Factor analysis confirmed that the items were loaded
to a unidimensional variable (Cronbach α = .86).

Perceived reputation. Six items were adopted from Javalgi et al. (1994) to measure how
individuals perceived the organization’s reputation. Participants were asked how much
they agreed that a team had good services/products, was well managed, only wanted
to make money, was involved in the community, responded to consumer needs, and
was a good organization to work for. These items were answered on a 5-point Likert-
type scale, ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree). Items were com-
bined and averaged for this measure (M = 3.23, SD = 0.74), which reached a
Cronbach’s alpha of .82.

Willingness to support the organization. A five-item measure was developed to assess

general willingness to support the organization using items adapted from Baker and
Churchill (1977) and Peng et al. (2010). Items were rated on a 5-point Likert-type
scale and sample items included: “I am willing to try the product/service of the orga-
nization,” “I am willing to buy the product/service of the organization,” “I seek out the
product/service of the organization,” “I would be willing to donate money to this orga-
nization,” and “I would be willing to donate my time to this organization.” Items were
summed and averaged to create a single rating (M = 2.68, SD = 1.17). Cronbach’s
alpha for this measure was .91.

Response strategy. Response strategy was dummy coded as 0 = corrective action (n =

238) and 1 = reducing offensiveness (n = 235).
Wang and Lewis 9

Perceived severity of the violation. Perceived severity of the violation was measured
using a single item that asked: “To what extent do you view this violation as offen-
sive?” Responses were rated on a 1 (Not at All) to 5 (Extremely) Likert-type scale (M
= 3.13, SD = 1.24). This variable was included as a control variable in the model.

Fan identification. This variable was measured using an established scale (Roccas et al.,
2008), which included 16 items on a scale of 1 to 7. The participants were asked to
indicate the degree to which they agree with the statements about how they feel about
a sports team. Sample statements include “I feel strongly affiliated with this group,”
“Belonging to this group is an important part of my identity,” and “This group is better
than other groups in all respects.” The scale demonstrated reliability (Cronbach’s α =
.95, M = 3.48, SD = 1.37). It was included in the model as a control variable as the
literature suggests that highly identified fans view their teams differently and may
assess the response strategies differently compared to other fans (Brown et al., 2013).

Type of team. Type of team was dummy coded as 0 = regional professional football
team (n = 230) and 1 = own university football team (n = 243). This variable was
included in the model as a control variable.

Manipulation Check
To validate the experiment design, we conducted a series of manipulation checks.
First, a t-test was run to compare how the respondents from the two teams (college
team and local NFL team) evaluated the reputation of the sports teams differently.
We found that participants who were assigned to the university football team were
more likely to view the team positively (M = 3.56, SD = 0.71) compared to those
who were assigned to the regional professional football team (M = 2.89, SD =
0.61), t(465.85) = −11.03, p < .001. The university team group also reported a
higher support intention (M = 3.27, SD = 1.05) than the professional team (M =
2.08, SD = 0.96), t(−12.93) = 470.61, p < .001. Furthermore, the university team
group reported a lower average score on moral outrage (M = 2.46, SD = 0.61) than
the professional team group (M = 2.75, SD = 0.73), t(4.60) = 449.03, p < .001.
Second, a series of t-tests were run to evaluate whether the respondents assigned to
the two crisis response strategy conditions showed a difference in the outcome vari-
ables. No significant differences for perceived reputation and support intention.
However, the respondents assigned to the corrective action condition reported a
slightly higher score on moral outrage (M = 2.67, SD = 0.63), compared to those
assigned to the reducing offensiveness condition (M = 2.54, SD = 0.73), t(2.14) =
460.31, p = .03.

Analysis
The analysis was done through structural equation modeling (SEM) using R package
lavaan (Rosseel, 2012). SEM examines the relationships between exogenous and
endogenous variables (Bollen, 1989). The following variables were exogenous
10 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

Figure 1. Proposed conceptual model.

variables: moral foundations, crisis response strategy, fan identification, the severity
of the violation, and type of team. The following were endogenous variables: per-
ceived reputation, moral outrage, and intention to support the team.
The proposed conceptual model (see Figure 1) and hypotheses were tested with the
following procedure: (a) At the global level, the overall chi-square goodness-of-fit test
was conducted and reported as an index of model adequacy, with a nonsignificant chi-
square value indicating a good fit of the model to the data (Bollen, 1989). (b) The
chi-square test is sensitive to sample size (Bollen, 1989) and therefore we reported the
following indicators to evaluate the model fit: the ratio of chi-square to the degree of
freedom (less than 3), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA, less than
.05), comparative fit index (CFI, higher than .95), the goodness-of-fit index (GFI,
higher than .95), and Tucker–Lewis index (TLI, higher than .95) (Kline, 2011; Schrodt
& Phillips, 2016). (c) At the local level, the significance of each individual path was
assessed using t ratio (alpha level = .05). (d) The model was modified based on
modification indices and theoretical reasoning (Byrne, 1998).

Results
Before the SEM, we calculated the bivariate correlation scores among the variables.
Table 1 shows the detailed results. All of the five moral foundations were significantly
correlated with each other, with the strongest correlation between care and fairness.
The moral foundations were all significantly correlated with perceived severity.
However, the correlation effects with moral outrage, reputation, and support intention
varied across the five dimensions. The crisis response strategy was only significantly
correlated with perceived severity and moral outrage, and both correlation scores were
 Table 1. Summary of the Bivariate Correlation Results.

Crisis Support
Variable Care Fairness Ingroup Authority Purity response Severity Outrage Reputation intention Identification
Care 1 .66** .31** .29** .33** .02 .15** .02 .13** .05 .05
Fairness .66** 1 .21** .23** .20** .03 .16** .11* .01 −.05 −.03
Ingroup .31** .21** 1 .73** .60** .03 .13** .11* .14** .13** .20**
Authority .29** .23** .73** 1 .61** −.02 .10* .05 .13** .11* .13**
Purity .33** .20** .60** .61** 1 −.02 .12** .13** .09 .11* .17**
Crisis response .02 .03 .03 −.02 −.02 1 −.11* −.10* .04 .03 .07
Severity .15** .16** .13** .10* .12** −.11* 1 .33** −.02 .002 .01
Outrage .02 .11* .11* .05 .13** −.10* .33** 1 −.34** −.25** −.09*
Reputation .13** .01 .14** .13** .09 .04 −.02 −.34** 1 .67** .52**
Support intention .05 −.05 .13** .11* .11* .03 .002 −.25** .67** 1 .55**
Identification .05 −.03 .20** .13** .17** .07 0.1 −.09* .52** .55** 1
*Indicates that correlation is significant at the .05 level (two-tailed). **Indicates that correlation is significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).

11
12 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

Table 2. Predictors of Moral Outrage, Reputation, and Support Intentions.

Model
Dependent Variable: Moral Outrage
Care/Harm −.13 (.06)*
Fairness/Cheating .14 (.06)*
Ingroup/Loyalty .09 (.06)
Authority/Respect −.10 (.06)
Purity/Sanctity .10 (.05)*
Severity of Violation .17 (.02)***
Team −.25 (.06)***
Dependent Variable: Reputation
Care .12 (.05)*
Fairness −.05(.05)
Ingroup/Loyalty .05 (.05)
Authority/Respect −.03 (.04)
Purity/Sanctity .03 (.06)
Moral Outrage −.30 (.04)***
Response Strategy −.02 (.05)
Identification .21 (.02)***
Severity of Violation .04 (.02)
Team .37 (.06)***
Dependent Variable: Support Intention
Response Strategy .003 (.07)
Reputation .69 (.06)***
Moral Outrage −.05 (.06)
Identification .21 (.03)***
Team .50 (.09)***
*Indicates a parameter where p <−.05. ***Indicates a parameter where p <−.001.

negative. Other notable correlations were between reputation and support intention,
between fan identification and reputation, and between fan identification and support
intention.
The chi-square test showed a nonsignificant result, indicating a good model fit to
the data, χ2(8, 465) = 8.76, p = .36. The χ2/df ratio was 1.10 (8.76/8), which was
lower than the required threshold. Overall goodness-of-fit indicators further sug-
gested that the model was a good fit, CFI = .999, GFI = .99, TLI = .996, and
RMSEA = .01. The model accounted for meaningful variance in the following vari-
ables: moral outrage (R2 = .18), perceived reputation (R2 = .43), and intention to
support the team (R2 = .54). We reviewed the modification indices generated by the
lavaan package in R, which measures the improvement in fit as a reduction in chi-
square. The modification indices did not suggest any meaningful paths to be added to
the model to improve fit indicators, as all of the modification indices were below the
threshold value 5 (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1996). Therefore, no model revision was
Wang and Lewis 13

Figure 2. Revised model.

needed. We present the detailed results from the model (see Table 2) in the following
paragraphs to test the hypotheses. The revised conceptual framework is presented in
Figure 2, by removing insignificant paths from the original model.
H1 tested the relationship between the relative salience of moral foundations and
perceived moral outrage. The results showed that the following moral foundations had
significant effects on moral outrage: care (β = −.13, SE = 0.06, p = .02), fairness
(β = .14, SE = 0.06, p = .02), and purity (β = .10, SE = 0.05, p = .03). The other two
moral foundations had no effect on moral outrage. H2 tested the relationship between
the moral foundations and perceived reputation of a sports organization post-crisis.
Results showed that one moral foundation was significantly related to perceived repu-
tation: care (β = .12, SE = 0.05, p = .02). H1 and H2 were supported.
H3 examined the relationship between moral outrage and perceived reputation.
The results showed that the more outraged an individual felt, the more negatively
they perceived the sports organization (β = −.30, SE = 0.04, p < .001). H3 was
supported.
H4 tested the relationship between crisis response strategies and perceived reputa-
tion. H5 tested the relationship between crisis response strategies and intention to
support the organization. The results showed no significant effect regarding either
relationship, indicating that using either a corrective action approach or a reducing
offensiveness approach did not make a significant difference. Therefore, H4 and H5
were not supported.
H6 tested the relationship between the perceived reputation of an organization post-
crisis and intention to support the organization. Results showed a significant and posi-
tive relationship (β = .69, SE = 0.06, p < .001). H6 was supported. H7 predicted that
those who experienced more moral outrage after a sports crisis would be less likely to
14 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

support a sports organization compared to those who experienced less moral outrage.
Results showed no effect. H7 was not supported.

Discussion
This study examined how salient moral foundations influence individuals’ evaluation
of a sports team and its crisis responses post-crisis, after controlling for the effects of
the perceived violation and team identification. Guided by MFT and IRT, it uncovered
the relationships among moral salience, crisis response strategies, perceived reputa-
tion, moral outrage, and individuals’ intention to support a sports organization. Results
showed that when predicting moral outrage after a sports crisis occurred, two moral
foundations (fairness and purity) had positive effects while care had a negative effect.
When predicting perceived reputation, one moral foundation (care) had a positive
effect while individual crisis response strategy had no effect. To unpack what would
influence individuals’ intentions to support a sports organization post-crisis, we found
that reputation had a positive effect, while both moral outrage and crisis response
strategies had no effect. These findings offer implications on what factors could func-
tion as effective buffers to prevent potential damages to a sports organization’s reputa-
tion and also their ability to maintain support from the community. We discuss the
results and their implications in the subsequent content below.

The Role of Moral Foundations

Those who valued fairness and purity experienced strong moral outrage toward the
sports organization, while those who valued care experienced very little moral outrage
toward the sports organization. Cheating (the moral transgression at hand) violated the
moral foundation of fairness (e.g., Landmann & Hess, 2018). Interestingly, moral out-
rage was also strong for those who hold purity as a salient virtue. In their development
of MFT, Haidt and Graham (2007) associated purity with religious undertones and the
ethics associated with divinity. There is increasing evidence that sports can provide an
avenue for social bonding similar to religion (e.g., Lewis & Hirt, 2019). Both institu-
tions have codes of conduct involving symbols and rituals that connect to value sys-
tems in society (Uszynski, 2013). In this sense, it is logical that those with a heightened
sense of purity are more outraged by a seemingly moral transgression by one of their
local teams. Alternatively, those who valued care were less outraged by the transgres-
sion. As a moral foundation, care is evolutionarily rooted in the raising of offspring
(Graham et al., 2013), where mothers are in tune with the suffering and distress of their
children. Although it is a stretch to assume that sports consumers perceive their favored
sports teams as similarly as they would their children, individuals who highly value
care may be more accommodating of moral violations when they are committed by
individuals or groups they associate with.
The results also revealed that those who valued care evaluated the reputation of
the organization more positively. Considering that the moral foundation of care
resulted in less moral outrage, it is logical that it was also associated with a more
Wang and Lewis 15

positive perception of the organization. We did not find evidence of effects from
other moral foundations. Given that the fan identification had a positive effect on
reputation and was also significantly correlated with loyalty and authority, it is pos-
sible that having a strong identification with a favored, local team may have crowded
out the effects of other salient moral values. In all, the findings associated with
moral salience confirm there is a moral component to the evaluation of and response
to sports crises.
This study also examined the relationship between moral outrage and perceived
reputation. The more outraged an individual felt, the more negatively they perceived
the sports organization. This effect appeared to be temporary as it had no effect on
their subsequent intention to support the team. Moral values mattered in their evalua-
tion of the sports crisis but only so far as their perceptions of organizational reputation;
they were not strong enough to impact participants’ intentions to support the organiza-
tion, particularly when the organization involved was a local university team or one
that they felt strongly in favor of. Commitment to and identification with the team may
be too strong, which suggests that sports crises, within reason, do not override one’s
intentions to support a team.

The Nonsignificant Buffering Effect of Crisis Response Strategies

Results determined that a sports team’s crisis response strategy had no effect on any of
the outcome variables. Although the literature has consistently demonstrated that cri-
sis response strategies can significantly influence perceptions of organizational repu-
tation (Park, 2017), a series of studies in the sports domain found that crisis responses
are often ineffective in repairing a team’s damaged reputation (Onwumechili &
Bedeau, 2017; Smith & Keeven, 2019). The nonsignificant effect of response strategy
from this study provides evidence that strategic messages regarding sports crises may
not have the same buffering effects as found in other organizational settings such as
corporate communication. The nonsignificant finding on perceived reputation sug-
gests that neither corrective action nor reducing offensiveness was effective in con-
vincing the general public when they already viewed the action as morally wrong and
offensive. Although response strategies did not make the individuals more outraged,
the non-effect could be explained by the strong impact of the perceived severity of the
violation. Furthermore, responses also had no effect on individuals’ intention to pro-
vide support to the team. This provides an additional indication that individuals may
view response strategies as untrustworthy or irrelevant.
Given that moral foundations can significantly influence individuals’ perceptions
of a sports organization and their behavioral intentions post-crisis, this study questions
whether buffering effects of crisis response strategies are overestimated. Recent
research in crisis communication has argued that crisis response strategies need to be
coupled with moral recognition to be effective (Coombs & Tachkova, 2019). Therefore,
the lack of effect from crisis response strategies on attitude and behavioral intentions
suggests that one possible explanation would be the moral component of sports crises.
The strong moral values individuals attach to sports suggest that when sports teams
16 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

respond to crises, they need to take into consideration the moral foundations audiences
possess and the corresponding moral outrage they may experience.
It appears that those who value care as a moral foundation are particularly immune
to crisis response messages/strategies. They experienced less outrage and perceived
the organization more positively post-crisis. Furthermore, we found that individuals
who identified highly with a sports team are also more likely to be immune to these
response strategies. Future research could explore how moral foundations contribute
to what we already know about many sports consumers: they are fans who are passion-
ate and invest a great deal into their favorite teams. The current study suggests that at
a fundamental (moral) level, they also care for them as one of their own. In addition,
we found that the outrage instigated after a moral violation is seemingly temporary—
at least when it is committed by a favored, local team, or by a team they strongly
identify with. Outrage did not influence intentions to support the organization in the
future, suggesting that fleeting missteps by organizations can be overcome, especially
when the consumer base is highly connected to the team. Therefore, we suggest that
organizations use moral framing to emphasize core values they stand for to lessen the
perceived severity of moral violation during crises.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

This study has several limitations that may offer directions for future research. First,
the study design focused only on two crisis scenarios with one professional football
team and one university football team. This experimental design helped us control for
sports-specific factors and focus on understanding how individuals’ perceptions of
sports organizations’ response strategies affected their attitude change and behavioral
intentions. However, it also limited the implications of the study to one scenario, one
sport, and one violation (recording a rival team’s practice). Future research should
examine the relationships tested here in other sport settings.
Second, the study design used real team names and coach names. We acknowledge
that the participants’ existing attitude in favor of or against a particular team may
have a confounding effect on their comprehension and assessment of the experiment
scenario. However, the use of real names helped to increase ecological validity (Frey
et al., 2000). In other words, there is a trade-off with the decision of using real names
or fictitious names. Therefore, we call for future research to assess how the buffering
effects examined in this study may differ when using real team names and fictitious
names.
Third, this study only examined news articles published on a professional sports
media website, which also may limit its generalization to other types of crisis mes-
saging. Sports crisis responses could occur across various media platforms (e.g.,
cable news, social media) and from different sources (e.g., journalists, management).
To get a more complete understanding of the buffering effects identified here, we call
for future research to include a variety of communication channels and sources to
evaluate whether the effects vary. In addition, this study only included one type of
transgression (a staff member recording a rival team’s practice). Future research
Wang and Lewis 17

could examine multiple transgressions that clearly violate specific moral foundations
to better assess the roles that specific foundations have on the evaluation and out-
comes of sports crises.
In addition, this study employed a student sample in its design. The decision was
made to facilitate data collection. Existing literature has argued that theoretical effects
should hold true regardless of sample type, as long as the study design is theory-driven
(Lee & Jahng, 2020; Shen, 2017). We acknowledge that although utilizing a student
sample was appropriate for the context at hand, a more representative sample across a
variety of ages, genders, races, and other factors would provide a more complete pic-
ture of the processes and outcomes examined. Finally, we measured two aspects of
organizational support to capture how much individuals are willing to provide mone-
tary and non-monetary support to a team. These outcomes measured here only assessed
perceptions, not actual behaviors. Thus, we call for future research to explore what
other behaviors and behavioral intentions may be relevant to sports teams.

Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of crisis response strategy in
buffering sports teams from a scandal, by taking into account individuals’ psychologi-
cal factors such as the salience of moral foundation values and moral outrage. We
found out that individuals who value certain moral foundations were immune to crisis
response messages; however, crisis responses had no effect on any of the outcome
variables. The results provide implications on how to provide strategic messages to
better handle a crisis in the sports setting.
This study makes several contributions to sports communication research and crisis
communication research. First, it took into account individuals’ psychological charac-
teristics and organizational response strategies as potential buffers in the context of
sports crises. Our findings suggest that buffering effects of crisis response strategies
may have been overstated. When individuals view a crisis as violating norms they
believe in, they moralize the violation and get outraged. It could lead to negative
effects on the sports team, no matter what crisis response strategies were used. As
Koerber and Zabara (2017) claimed, other buffers such as good community relations
may preclude the need for any response at all. Second, this study examines the out-
comes of crisis response by moving beyond perceived reputational damage. It focused
on individuals’ moral outrage and behavioral intentions to provide monetary and non-
monetary support to the sports organizations post-crisis. This lends insight to what
types of buffering effects can be observed in the context of sports crises. Third, practi-
cal implications on strategic communication about sports crises were derived from the
results. In particular, we recommend that practitioners should take into consideration
the cognitive aspects of stakeholders’ information processing and pay particular atten-
tion to the affective responses they may experience.
The current research offers findings that may undermine the ability of crisis
response strategies to buffer sports organizations in times of a crisis. It calls upon com-
munication scholars to carefully untangle both individual physical factors and response
18 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 00(0)

strategies while being mindful of the ethical and practical implications of their research
that could alter the strategic communication landscape. Communication scholars are
uniquely poised to address the role of communication in influencing the relationships
between an organization in crisis and the public.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

ORCID iDs
Rong Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2307-709X
Nicky Lewis https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1753-9101

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Author Biographies
Rong Wang (PhD, University of Southern California) is an assistant professor at the Department
of Communication, University of Kentucky. Her research interests include crisis communica-
tion and organizational communication.
Nicky Lewis (PhD, Indiana University–Bloomington) is an assistant professor in the Department
of Communication at the University of Kentucky. Her research interests include social psycho-
logical processes and effects of the mass media.