Peers play a vital role in shaping quality sport experiences. Early descriptive work has highlighted the importance of considering the social context when examining sport commitment, the desire or resolve to maintain sport participation. Yet, little research has investigated the specific role of peers in contributing to sport commitment. Peers may be especially important to sport commitment because athletes often pursue sport to cultivate a sense of affiliation and to make friends. Accordingly, this dissertation examined how various peer relationships constructs predict sport commitment in highly involved athletes. The purpose of Study 1 was to examine whether impression motivation moderates the association of social constraints and sport commitment. Collegiate athletes (N = 257) completed established measures of impression motivation, perceptions of social constraints, and both enthusiastic and constrained sport commitment. Results largely suggested that impression motivation did not moderate the relationship between social constraints and sport commitment. One of the eight models run was significant and supported the moderation hypothesis. Self-development impression motivation (IM) was found to moderate the relationship between social constraints and the enthusiastic form of commitment, such that higher impression motivation strengthened that association. Overall, this model accounted for an additional 4% of variance predicted above and beyond the main effect of social constraints.The purpose of Study 2 was to (a) examine how positive friendship quality dimensions and friendship conflict would predict sport commitment, and (b) examine how other peer variables (peer acceptance, impression motivation) add to prediction of sport commitment beyond the friendship dimensions. Collegiate track and field athletes (N = 198) completed established measures of friendship quality, friendship conflict, peer acceptance, and impression motivation. Higher loyalty and intimacy and perceptions of conflict along with lower conflict resolution associated with greater constrained commitment. Thus, the more loyal an athlete was to their close friend, combined with higher perceived conflict and weaker perceived capacity to resolve conflict, associated with a greater perceived sense of obligation to remain in sport. Results addressing our secondary purpose suggested that a span of peer constructs would best predict sport commitment. Higher self-esteem enhancement and supportiveness, things in common, loyalty and intimacy, companionship and pleasant play, self-development IM, social identity development IM, and avoidance of negative outcomes IM collectively predicted more enthusiastic commitment. In addition, less things in common, conflict resolution, and peer acceptance combined with higher conflict and avoidance of damaging impressions IM predicted commitment that was more constrained and less enthusiastic. Our findings suggest that a "social tapestry" of peer constructs predict sport commitment. Friendship quality linked to sport commitment in a theoretically consistent direction, but only when considered alongside peer acceptance and impression motivation. This noted, the redundancy statistics for each root were 6.3% and 6.2% respectively, indicating a modest finding. Together, this dissertation shows that peer relationships matter to sport commitment, albeit modestly. These studies suggest that examining the full social tapestry of an athlete may best enrich our understanding of how social relationships, such as those with peers, tie to sport commitment.
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