The role of motivational climate for sense of vitality in organized youth grassroots football players: Do harmonious and obsessive types of passion play a mediating role?

The mediating role of types of passion in the relationships between motivational climates and subjective vitality was examined among 283 experienced young Norwegian grassroots football players (aged 12-16 years). A Structural Equation Model (SEM) based path model revealed that mastery climate predicted subjective vitality directly as well as mediated by harmonious passion and through a chain in which harmonious passion fuelled obsessive passion, in turn facilitating vitality. The former was the stronger mediation path of the two. A performance climate was unrelated to obsessive passion. The pattern of results generally supports the proposed motivational climate–passion–vitality link. However, the observed mediation chain involving also a positive mastery climate–obsessive passion–vitality link invites further examinations to better understand both young football players’ subjective meaning making of harmonious and obsessive passion