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: