Most research studies examined the determinants of spectator attendance were concentrated on professional or minor league baseball games (e.g., Wakefield, 1995); minor league hockey games (e.g., Zhang et al., 1997); professional basketball games (e.g., Zhang, Pease, Hui, & Michaud, 1995); and Division I college football games (e.g., Kwon & Trail, 2001). However, little research has been done on minor league games such as football (i.e., Arena Football League). The purpose of this study was to develop the Spectator Motivation Inventory (SMI) to examine factors that might have influenced fans' decision to attend arena football home games.
Method
Development of the SMI was carried out in two steps: (a) formulation of the preliminary scale and test of content validity, and (b) test administration and an exploratory factor analysis. The initial SMI scale was developed based on a thorough review of related literature and field observation. Two university professors in sport management and two senior administrators of the arena football team participated in the test of content validity in terms of item relevance, representativeness, and clarity. The 30-item SMI was administrated to spectators (N=391) during an arena football game (2008) in a large metropolitan area in the Midwest. Item responses were based on a 7-point Likert scale (e.g., 7 = very much/very important, 1 = not at all/not important).
Analysis/Results
Using the FACTOR REDUCTION procedure from the SPSS for Windows (SPSS, 2004), it was found that the two-factor structure was most interpretable as identified by the alpha extraction method. Two items had a loading less than .30 and were discarded. After this refinement, the SMI included two factors and 28 items: Decision (16 items) and Promotion (12 items), which explained a total variance of 53.87%. Alpha reliability coefficients of the factors were .932, and .929, respectively. These coefficients suggested that all items were reliable in estimating their respective construct.
Conclusions
Based on the results of the exploratory factor analysis and alpha reliability coefficients (above .90), the SMI is a reliable scale in measuring spectators' decisions in attending arena football games. Since this study is limited to a sample of spectators attending a regular season arena football home game in the Midwest, the results may not be generalized to other sports or regions. For this reason, the SMI may need minor modification (some items) and validation (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis) when it is applied to samples from other sports or settings.