The development of spectator motivation scale for South korean professional baseball fans

Abstract

With the significant growth of the Korean baseball league for the past generation, sport managers and administrators in baseball are desperately looking for new revenue streams to bring more number of fans to the ballparks by offering value-added tangible and intangible products and services such as mascots, music, cheer-leadings, statistics, program books, and on-site promotion opportunities. In order to accomplish these set goals and objectives sport managers and administrators should fully understand who their fans are, what they want at the ballparks, and what makes them revisit the ballparks. The main purpose of this current study was to develop and validate fan motivation scale which is uniquely oriented to Korean baseball fans. A total of 1,927 surveys were collected and 1,869 were utilized in this study after excluding 58 surveys with incomplete or missing values. Reliability coefficients were calculated by factor and correlation coefficients were obtained by test-re-test reliability to remove inappropriate items. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to verify the structural model fit for the proposed seven-factor model after exploratory factor analysis through principal component with orthogonal rotation method. The newly developed seven-factor survey instrument consists of the fandom, regional connection, entertainment, dramatic curiosity, sense of belonging to the cheering team, ties with family members, and expertise.