Waseda University · Social Sciences
Professor Shintaro Sato's research lab specializes in sport and tourism management, with a strong focus on consumer behavior, reputation management, and the psychological impacts of major sporting events. The lab investigates how athletes, brands, and destinations respond to crises—such as athlete scandals or event cancellations—while also exploring factors that influence tourist loyalty, psychological well-being, and public perception. Key research directions include reputational risk in sport branding, the role of consumer involvement and knowledge in crisis response, and the long-term effects of mega-events on local communities. The lab employs experimental and longitudinal methodologies to provide actionable insights for sport organizations, tourism destinations, and brand managers.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Research question: The mass media widely broadcasts scandals. However, previous literature lacks examinations of consumer reactions to athlete scandals. Given the detrimental impact, it is important to understand how athletes and brand managers can optimally respond when scandals occur. The purpose of this study is to develop the fundamental understanding of consumer reactions and the effective response strategies in athlete reputational crisis (ARC) settings.Research methods: A three factorial
Understanding active sport tourists’ profiles and nurturing their destination loyalty are important considerations in the tourism market. Loyal tourists are valuable because they tend to revisit a focal destination and elicit positive word-of-mouth. Focusing on a snow-based active sport tourism context, this study was conducted to examine (1) the usefulness of experience-use history (EUH) as a segmentation tool and (2) the relationship between perceived value factors (i.e. quality, emotional res
The current study was conducted to examine the relationship among leisure engagement, affective (i.e. attraction, centrality, resistance to change) and cognitive (i.e. equipment, knowledge) leisure involvement, leisure satisfaction, and subjective happiness. From a sample of 493 American scuba divers, we found that (1) the oft-supported leisure engagement-happiness relationship was rejected, and (2) subjective happiness was directly or indirectly associated with affective and cognitive leisure i
The current study aimed to examine the relationships among residents’ impact perception of 2019 Rugby World Cup (i.e. economic impact, cultural interests and new opportunity, community pride, and environmental impact), psychological capital (i.e. hope, self-efficacy, optimism, and resilience), and psychological well-being. The two-wave time-lagged data were collected from residents in the host cities (a following week of the event and eight weeks after the event; N = 206). The results indicated
The pandemic of the COVID-19 has forced various sport organizations to postpone or cancel sport events. The current investigation provides a rapid analysis of public perceptions of (1) postponement and cancelation decisions made by sport organizations, and (2) whether the Tokyo Olympics 2020 should be held in July 2020. Data from Japanese citizens (n = 529) show that approximately 75% supported postponement decisions made by professional sport leagues. Surprisingly, only fewer than 50% supported
Despite some of the recent examinations of an athlete’s reputational crisis (ARC), their negative spillover effects on endorsed and competing brands have been overlooked. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between perceived severity, athlete endorser credibility (i.e., incompetence, untrustworthiness), and attitudes towards endorsed and competing brands. To enhance theoretical understanding of the phenomenon, the moderating role of consumer knowledge was also tested. P
Despite the frequent controversies in sport, little research has been conducted to understand sport consumers' emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to athlete scandals. Drawing from attribution and expectancy–violation theories, this study examines the effects of athlete scandals on emotion (i.e. anger), cognition (i.e. perceived responsibility), and behavioral intention (i.e. negative word-of-mouth; NWOM). The results of an experiment showed that selected characteristics of athlete sc
Thriving, “a psychological state composed of the joint experience of vitality and learning (Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton, Sonenshein, & Grant [2005]. A socially embedded model of thriving at work. Organization Science, 16(5), 537–549.)” might offer further insight into the problem of youth sport development research. The purpose of the study was to investigate the mechanisms underlying thriving within a youth sport context. More specifically, the present study considered the perspective of Self-
The purpose of this study was to examine consumers’ comparative judgment of athlete endorsers in back-toback advertisement settings. Drawing on the inclusion/exclusion model (Schwarz & Bless, 2007), the authors argue that (a) a recently observed athlete endorser impacts consumer judgment of subsequently presented endorsers, and (b) the valence of the impact depends on brand category membership of the consecutively presented endorsers. A 2 (representative endorser activation: present vs. abse
It is important for brands to appropriately respond when their athlete endorsers are involved in a scandal. The present study examines how consumer evaluations of endorsed brands are influenced by a brand’s response to an endorser scandal. A 2 (brand response strategy type: maintenance vs. termination) × 2 (endorser scandal type: competence-relevant vs. competence-irrelevant) between-subjects experiment is conducted. Specifically, the authors focus on the perceived appropriateness of the respons
To extend the literature on consumer pro-environmentalism, this study explores the relationships between individuals’ participation in outdoor, snow-based sport; their pro-environmental behavioral intentions (PBIs); and their intentions to purchase from environmentally friendly companies (PI-EFCs). Participants were recruited from an international ski resort in Japan (N = 286). The results indicate that snow-based sport involvement influences PI-EFCs through PBIs when associated actions were per
The extant literature supporting the relationship between watching sport and well-being often includes a specific sample population (e.g. sport fans), with the evidence highlighted by limited research approaches (i.e. subjectively measured well-being). It is imperative to assess the robustness of the evidence by implementing diverse methods to understand the contributions of sport-watching behavior to well-being. The current research aimed to provide evidence on the effects of watching sport on
People's lives have drastically changed since the outbreak of COVID-19. One concern during the pandemic has been the level of inactivity among people. Compared to various generations (e.g., baby boomers, generation alpha), Generation Z (Gen Z) traditionally spends much less time in outdoor spaces. Due to the pandemic, their inactiveness is assumed to be even more severe. Hiking, an outdoor activity, has become a possible remedy for young people to exercise in a safer sport environment compared t
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