‘Welcome to the jungle’: Content creators and fan entitlement in the furry fandom

In the present research, we examined fan entitlement among members of the furry fandom – a group of people with a shared interest in media and activities that feature anthropomorphic animals (animals given human-like features). We surveyed both fans and content creators in the fandom, which allowed us to test several predictors of fan entitlement (e.g., stigmatization, age) and the relationship between fan entitlement and perceptions of fan entitlement among artists. The results are then contextualized within well-known psychological processes (e.g., the availability heuristic), laying the groundwork for future research on the processes underlying fan entitlement and its effects. Implications of the results are discussed for three different bodies of research: research on the furry fandom specifically, research on fan entitlement more broadly, and research on fan/creator relationships in general.