Spectator Involvement at Sport Stadiums

Abstract

In sport management, there are few studies that have paid its attention to sport involvement among spectators. Thus, examining sport involvement to understand the sport consumption behavior of spectators is important. The purposes of this study are (1) to provide evidence of the reliability, construct validity, and hierarchical structure of the proposed spectator involvement scale and (2) to examine the relationships of spectator involvement with several outcome variables. We analyzed a sample of 892 spectators at professional soccer and baseball games in Japan. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated the reliability and validity of the spectator involvement scale which consisted of five factors. The findings of structural equation modeling supported the relationship between spectator involvement and the outcome variables.