3.2. Trust and team identification
The concept of trust in services context possess a unique importance for the specific attributes of the services, as many researchers mentioned that most customers may not be able to assess the service until after its consumption which imply that services must have credence attributes (Chiou et al., 2002; Trawick & Swan, 1981). Sport is that type of service that best reflect that thought, as for the fans to attend team’s games, for example, they need to trust in the team and the players to give an ethical game (Wu et al., 2012).
Many prior researches confirmed that there is a positive impact of trust on identification. For instance, Restubog et al. (2008) found that employees possess higher identification when they trust the authority inside the organization. Keh and Xie’s (2009) also found a positive link between team trust and team identification. While Borgen (2001) explained that identification is critical for the development of trust. Therefore, it’s hypothesized that: