New Approach to Assess Perceptions of Stadium Quality

In this study, I developed a revised measurement scale to assess the quality of sports facilities. Because sporting events meet psychological, social, and experiential needs of sports consumers, sports teams provide various ancillary services and entertainment activities to enhance consumer experiences. Accordingly, experiential elements of sporting events have been examined in the study of service quality (Ko, Zhang, Cattani, & Pastore, 2011; Yoshida & James, 2011). This line of research, however, lacks a scale to assess the extent to which functional and experiential elements of sports facilities influence consumer behaviors. Although sportscape (Wakefield, Blodgett, & Sloan, 1996) was developed to assess the quality of sports facilities, items in the scale have been subsumed and used to measure service or event quality (Ko et al., 2011). Additionally, the existing scales focus on functional aspects of sports stadium and do not fully assess the quality of sports facilities as a branded environment where spectators can have unique experiences. To address the gaps, I developed a revised scale to measure consumers' perceived sports stadium quality, which encompasses both functional and experiential aspects of sports facilities. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a revised scale to measure consumers' perceived quality of sports facilities. The existing scale to assess the quality of sports facilities is sportscape (Wakefield et al., 1996), which focuses on sports stadium factors such as stadium access, seat comfort, and layout accessibility. By revising and extending the original sportscape, I developed a scale to assess the quality of sports facilities as a representation of a team brand, as well as a place where sports consumers can have unique and memorable experiences. I used the procedure presented by Hinkin (1998) to develop a revised scale, and identified sportscape factors based on a literature review and focus group interviews. After specific factors were identified and question items were developed, two rounds of data collection were conducted to provide evidence of reliability and validity for the revised scale. To identify sportscape factors and generate items, non-sportscape studies of brand associations (e.g., Ross et al., 2006) and sports consumer motives (e.g., Trail & James, 2001) were reviewed, and four focus group interviews were conducted with consumers and facility/event managers. Following the item generation process, an expert panel review with three sport marketing researchers was conducted. Factors were updated, and items were revised and/or removed, and 44 items across eight sportscape factors were tested with scale administrations. Data on the 44 items were collected from university students, and the EFA result showed the sportscape consisted of six factors: Facility Access, Facility Layout, Seat Space, Facility Aesthetics, Technology, and History. Technology and History were new factors, which were not examined in previous sportscape studies (e.g., Greenwell et al., 2002a; Wakefield et al., 1996). A total of 27 items were retained after the item reduction process, and general sports consumers were recruited to test the remaining sportscape items in the main study. Initial testing of the revised scale resulted in the removal of seven additional items; a 20-item scale showed a moderate model fit and evidence of reliability and convergent validity. Predictive validity was also tested with three criterion constructs: service quality, brand experience, and stadium experience satisfaction. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) result provided evidence the sportscape influenced perceptions of service quality, and service quality in turn impacted stadium experience satisfaction. Sportscape also had a positive direct effect on brand experience, indicating that sports facilities are brand-related stimuli that are expected to induce internal and behavioral responses of consumers (Brakus et al., 2009). The revised sportscape scale showed evidence of reliability and content, convergent, and criterion-related validity, yet there was a lack of discriminant validity in the main study. This necessitates scale validation in various spectator sporting events to assess the measurement model, and improve the utility of the revised scale for future studies. The revised scale consists of 10 items from the original scale (Wakefield et al. 1996) and 10 new items that were developed based on the literature review and focus group interviews. With both existing and new items included, the revised scale provides a measure of consumers' perceptions of stadium quality not only as a service environment, but also as a branded environment where consumers have unique and memorable experiences. The revised Sportscape encompasses both functional and experiential aspects of sports facilities, and can be further utilized to examine the influences of sports facilities on consumers.