**2. Method**

### **2.1 Sample**

The data were collected through a market research company from February 22 to 25, 2022. Data from 2046 respondents (aged 18 to 65 years, mean age 42.8 years, 54.5% male) were used in the survey after removing an unreliable sample of 2067 respondents. Then, the respondents were divided into fandom participants and nonparticipants to compare levels of well-being.

### **2.2 The level of involvement in fandom**

First, the respondents were asked if they engage in fandom (multiple answer):


Other than those who chose 4), respondents were asked to describe the activities related to fandom. Following the finding of Aoki and Ishizuka (4), this study examines fandom based on the relationships with others. In addition to relationships between the fans themselves and their favorites and relationships with other fans, fandom also includes experiences that are encountered by the fans themselves. The respondents who are involved in fandom described the frequency of 10 activities as: (1) never, (2) seldom, (3) sometimes, and (4) usually (**Table 1**).

### **2.3 The level of well-being**

The level of well-being was measured using a PERMA-Profiler developed by Butler and Kern [25] via 11 international surveys (N = 31, 966). The respondents evaluated each of the 15 items (three items per PERMA domain) (**Table 2**) on an 11-point Likert


### **Table 1.**

*Fandom activities in the questionnaire.*

scale (0 to 10). The average score of the three questions per element was used in the analysis as it is recommended by Butler and Kern [25].

## **2.4 Control variables**

In addition to the data of fandom and well-being, the following data were collected as control variables: age, gender (1 = male, 0 = female), marital status (1 = married and 0 = unmarried), employment status (1 = unemployed, 2 = part-time, 3 = fulltime), educational background (1 = junior high school, 2 = high school, 3 = college, 4 = undergrad, 5 = graduate school), annual income level (1 = 0, 2 = less than JPY 1 million, 3 = less than JPY 2 million, …, 11 = less than JPY 12 million, 13 = less than JPY 15 million, 14 = less than JPY 20 million, 15 = more JPY 20 million approx. USD 1.5 thousand). For clarification, employment status represents the length of labor time, and educational background represents the length of educational period.


*Note. Respondents are shown in alternating order.*

*The PERMA-Profiler consists of 23 items that include elements other than PERMA; 15 items are highlighted for the analysis of this study.*

**Table 2.** *PERMA-profiler (Butler and Kern, 2016).*
