When considering that athletes are becoming more vocal about their beliefs related to social justice initiatives, the role of an athlete’s gender could have an impact on how sports fans view that athlete. When deciding to support or oppose a corporate social advocacy initiative, it can be argued that an individual’s perception of an athlete’s or team’s stance towards social justice can be influenced by elements of one’s social identity. Therefore, the current study expands on this idea by exploring how gender affects the perception of the credibility of an athlete as an endorser of CSA initiatives, considering both the gender of the participant and the gender of the athlete. Using both NBA and WNBA athletes, this experiment manipulates a league CSA initiative and players’ endorsements of the initiative to determine if (a) the participant’s reported gender and (b) the athlete’s gender will impact the perception of the athlete’s credibility. Results provided evidence that gender plays a significant role in that evaluation, such that the NBA player was perceived as more credible regardless of respondent gender, and while female respondents recorded no difference, male participants perceived the NBA player as more credible than his WNBA counterpart.

中文翻译：

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性别在评估运动员对企业社会倡导活动的认可中的作用

当考虑到运动员越来越直言不讳地表达与社会正义倡议相关的信念时，运动员性别的作用可能会影响体育迷如何看待该运动员。当决定支持或反对企业社会倡导倡议时，可以说，个人对运动员或团队对社会正义的立场的看法可能会受到其社会身份因素的影响。因此，当前的研究扩展了这一想法，探讨性别如何影响运动员作为 CSA 倡议认可者的可信度，同时考虑参与者的性别和运动员的性别。该实验使用 NBA 和 WNBA 运动员，操纵联盟 CSA 倡议和球员对该倡议的认可，以确定 (a) 参与者报告的性别和 (b) 运动员的性别是否会影响对运动员可信度的看法。结果证明，性别在该评估中发挥着重要作用，因此，无论受访者性别如何，NBA 球员都被认为更可信，虽然女性受访者没有记录到差异，但男性受访者认为 NBA 球员比 WNBA 球员更可信。