An Investigation of Environmental Motivation Factors Affecting Fans of Minor League Baseball

Although they are important to the sports spectator experience, there have been few studies of crowd control, concession services, parking, and the like. These environmental motivation factors as they affect fans of specified sports were the focus of this study, which took as its premise that fans of a given sport differ from fans of other given sports in terms of their motivation to follow the progress of a team. The neo-Marxist critique of spectator sports in capitalist society holds that sports spectators are more likely than nonspectators to be actively involved both in sports and in other cultural activities, including politics. Furthermore, many spectator sports actually tend to increase hostility and aggression in fans, rather than rendering fans apathetic or providing them the lucid equivalent of an Aristotelian catharsis (Guttmann, 1981). From ancient times to the present, individuals who have demonstrated allegiance or devotion to a particular sport, a particular team, and/or a particular player have been classified as sports fans.

According to previous studies (Hansen & Gauthier, 1989; Zhang, Pease, Hui, & Michaud, 1995), there are four major factors that affect spectators’ decisions about attending games. The attractiveness of the home team is a first and vital consideration. Individual players’ skill, league standing, breaking of prior records, team record, performance, and star players together affect fans’ attendance at games (Zhang et al.,1997). In Greenstein and Marcum’s study (1981) of Major League Baseball from 1946 to 1975, hypothesized reasons for attendance at games were teams’ win-loss records, pitching staff, and home-run batters. The study results showed that 25% of the variance in attendance was due to team performance. Jones (1984) found a number of significant factors related to hockey game attendance: a winning home team relative to the league, a qualified visiting team relative to the league, a game’s role in progress to season play-offs, superstar players, and preference as to team style (i.e., fighting vs. skating).

The attractiveness of the visiting team (its quality, the presence of star players, the strength of its rivalry with the home team, etc.) is a second major factor in fans’ decision making about game attendance (Zhang et al., 1997), and a third is economic variables including ticket pricing, promotions, and advertising (Hansen & Gauthier, 1989; Zhang et al., 1995). Promotions and income have been found to relate positively to game attendance, while ticket price, televising of games, available entertainment alternatives, and available sport-event alternatives have generally been found to relate negatively to game attendance (Baade & Tiehen, 1990; Bird, 1982; Siegfried & Eisenberg, 1980; Zhang et al., 1995). The fourth significant factor in fans’ decisions to attend games is audience preference, meaning, for example, game schedules, convenience, stadium quality, weather, and team history in a community. Weekend games and end-of-season games increase attendance, while afternoon games decrease attendance; showing no effect on attendance are double headers and home dates (Drever & MacDonald, 1981; Hansen & Gauthier, 1989; Hay & Thueson, 1986; Hill, Madura, & Zuber, 1982; Siegfried & Eisenberg, 1980). In addition, team attractiveness variables and audience preference variables have generally been found to relate positively to game attendance (Baade & Tiehen, 1990; Becker & Suls, 1983; Bird, 1982; Demmert, 1973; Godbey & Robinson, 1979; Hansen & Gauthier, 1989; Jones, 1984; Wall & Myers, 1989; Whitney, 1988; Zech, 1981).

Employing psychological and sociological theories concerning sports fans, Wakefield and Sloan (1995) sought to identify specific stadium factors affecting attendance. Their study argued that spectators who enjoyed spending time at a stadium should be relatively likely to want to spend additional time there, while conversely, spectators who had had an unpleasant experience at a stadium should be relatively unlikely to want to spend additional time there (and risk repetition of the unpleasant experience). Stadium qualities that have been considered environmental motivation factors include parking, cleanliness, comfort (or convenience), food service, and fan behavior, as outlined below.

Where stadium parking spaces are ample, spectators’ enjoyment of the stadium experience may be enhanced. Low-tolerance and task-oriented individuals may experience frustration if locating a parking space and/or walking in to the stadium require excessive amounts of time (Bitner, 1992; Snodgrass, Russell, & Ward, 1988). Spectators dissatisfied with parking conditions are relatively likely to leave a game early and express less satisfaction with their stadium experience.

The cleanliness of a stadium is primarily a function of stadium service quality. For instance, as a game progresses, restrooms and concession areas can fill with trash and spilled food and drink. Spectators confronting such refuse may feel unwilling to use the facilities and may become dissatisfied (Wakefield & Sloan, 1995).

Physical comfort in a stadium is, as Melnick (1993) found, another important factor. The width of aisles and hallways, the arrangement of seats, and the amount of room afforded for concessions and restroom facilities (which may also be thought of as the convenience of stadium facilities) should be sufficient to accommodate social interaction and facilitate enjoyment of the game. A spectator who feels uncomfortable because other spectators are too close or who feels hampered in exiting the stands and accessing restrooms or concessions may leave a game early and hesitate to attend further games (Wakefield & Sloan, 1995).

From a food service perspective, spectators are virtually held captive in the stadium for the three or more hours before and during a game (Wakefield & Sloan, 1995). By offering a variety of appetizing foods, a stadium facility enhances the spectator’s sports encounter.

Finally, fan behavior that is offensive to or abusive of fellow fans may, Bernstein noted (1991), prompt some spectators to leave a game early, especially when such behavior continues throughout a game. Both players’ behavior and the intensity of the two opponents’ rivalry affect fan behavior, as does alcohol consumption.  When stadium managers and personnel carefully monitor fan behavior, moving quickly to end unpleasant situations (in other words, when they practice crowd control), many negative experiences on the part of their patrons can be prevented (Wakefield & Sloan, 1995).

In addition, while each of the five preceding stadium factors would be expected to influence all spectators, those spectators who are most loyal to the home team should be relatively likely to stay throughout a game and to return to the stadium in future, due to their loyalty to the team. In other words, spectators who are loyal to the home team are likely to want to spend time at the stadium, and to return, primarily due to a desire to see the team play (Wakefield & Sloan, 1995).

]Methodology[

The purpose of this study was to examine environmental motivation factors and fan loyalty affecting Alabama residents whose communities had no Major League Baseball team, but did have a Class AA Minor League Baseball (MiLB) team. Specifically, the study sought to ascertain the types of environmental factors (parking, crowd control, stadium cleanliness, convenient facilities, and food and beverage service) affecting fans who are attending professional baseball games. Fan loyalty to specific baseball teams was also analyzed.

To obtain fan responses reflecting realistic evaluations of the related stadium and environmental factors, Wakefield and Sloan’s (1995) adapted Stadium Factors Measurement questionnaire was modified and used with an on-site distribution and collection strategy during each July 2001 home game of the Mobile (Alabama) BayBears. The BayBears are a Class AA MiLB team in the Southern League and play in Hank Aaron Stadium. The questionnaire was distributed in all 14 seating sections of the stadium. The researchers employed a stratified random sampling method with no discriminating factors except age.  Any qustionnaire collected by the researchers that had been completed by an individual under 18 years of age was excluded. Age discrimination was made subjectively in the effort to exclude children whose visit to the baseball stadium was believed to have been influenced by their parents. To promote fans’ participation in the survey, the BayBears organization provided to participants complimentary tickets to any upcoming regular season game in 2001.

To obtain reliability estimates and to establish the construct validity of the instrument, a pilot study was conducted before the data were collected from the final target population. Administration of the existing instrument also served as a field test further establishing its content and face validity. After the questionnaire items had been formulated, the survey was administered to 46 United States Sports Academy graduate students who had survey experience. Their remarks were sought concerning the appropriateness of the questionnaire, relevance of its content, clarity of its questions, ease of completion, and time required for completion. Based on the 46 students’ responses, a few minor changes were made to the instrument. In its final form, the instrument contained 20 items on four pages; average time to complete the survey was 3–4 min.

The 20 separate items comprising the survey covered both sociodemographic characteristics and environmental motivation factors. Participants’ sociodemographic information included demographics as well as behavioral variables. Demographic variables were gender, ethnicity, age, marital status, education level, employment status, income, and residence. Behavioral variables were game attendance rate, type of ticket purchased, reasons for following favorite teams’ progress, and preferred means of following favorite teams’ progress (e.g., at ball park, by television broadcast, by radio broadcast, etc.).

The modified Stadium Factors Measurement questionnaire was used with a 7-point Likert response scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The scale was developed and employed in order to indicate respondents’ characteristics related to environmental motivation factors and team loyalty.

]Results[

The data were collected from a stratified random sample of respondents (N = 282) at the Hank Aaron Stadium in Mobile, Alabama. The sample consisted of 155 males (n = 155, 55%) and 127 females (n = 112, 45%) (Table 1). To simplify the data analysis, the variable age was first recoded in seven categories: 18–20 years, 21–30 years, 31–40 years, 41–50 years, 51–60 years, 61–70 years, and 71 or more years. Respondents ranged in age from 18 to 74 years (M = 37.97, SD = 13.07), with 89% falling between age 21 and age 60. Those fans age 18–20 constituted 6% of the sample, while fans 61 years old or older constituted 5.3% of the sample.

The majority of respondents were Caucasian (n = 251, 89.0%), followed by African-American (n = 27, 9.6%), Hispanic (n = 2, 0.7%), Asian (n =1, 0.4%), and other (n = 1, 0.4%). The majority of respondents were married (n = 180, 63.8%). Some 30% (n = 82) had completed college, and approximately 29% (n = 81) had some college education (respondents who had earned a graduate degree or completed some graduate study comprised 17.3% of the sample, n = 49). About 71% (n = 201) of the respondents were employed; 10% were full-time homemakers. Most of the respondents (n = 236, 83.7%) were residents of Alabama, although 46 individuals (16.3%) were nonresidents. More than half the respondents had yearly incomes between $20,000 and $59,999, while another 13.5% earned between $60,000 and $79,999 annually; those earning more than $80,000 comprised about 13% of the sample. The remaining 20% (approximately) had incomes below $20,000 (Table 1).

Concerning game attendance rates, during the previous season, approximately 57.0% of the study respondents (n = 159) had attended BayBears games (including home and away games) less than 3 times per month. In addition, 18.1% of the sample (n = 51) were attending their first BayBears game. The third largest group of respondents reported attending games  3 to 5 times per month during the previous season. Most of the survey participants were attending the game using a single-game ticket (n = 183, 64.9%); 33 respondents had used a group ticket to attend the game (n = 33, 11.7%). The remaining 23% of respondents fell in 5 categories: full-season ticket (4.6%), half-season ticket (2.5%), package ticket (5.7%), guest of season ticket holder (6.4%), and other, for instance a complimentary ticket (4.3%).

More than 25.0% of the respondents (n = 78) said that they followed a favorite baseball team because they had grown up in the host city or state; another 26.0% said they followed a particular team because of its geographic location. Having family members who liked the team was a reason cited by 11.0% of the sample for following a particular team. The presence of a favorite player on the team was the reason given by 11.7% of the sample for following a given team. The majority of respondents (n = 222, 78.7%) reported following a favorite baseball team by watching television; other means employed to follow teams were going to ball parks (n = 24, 8.5%), magazine and/or newspaper coverage (n = 16, 5.7%), Internet coverage (n = 9, 3.2%), radio coverage (n = 3, 1.1%), and other, such as information gained from friends or family members (n = 8, 2.8%) (Table 2).

Analysis of the data on environmental motivation factors in respondents’ attendance at the baseball stadium (Table 3) showed that the most important such factor was cleanliness (M = 5.47, SD = 1.33). Next in importance was convenient facilities (M = 5.40, SD = 1.36), followed by parking (M = 5.33, SD = 1.52), and “fan control” (M = 5.27, SD = 1.36). In terms of team loyalty, the respondents demonstrated positive opinions about a favorite MiLB baseball team even when stadium-related environmental factors were unsatisfactory (M = 5.00, SD = 1.36).

In addition, a group of t tests was employed to look for significant differences in environmental motivation factors affecting Alabama residents and nonresidents (Table 4). Those survey participants who were Alabama residents had significantly higher “loyalty factor” scores (M = 5.15, SD = 1.45) than did nonresident participants (M = 4.26, SD = 1.98), at the .01 level. No other significant difference between residents and nonresidents was observed for the remaining environmental motivation factors considered in the study.

Multiple regression analysis was employed to examine the relationship of loyalty to environmental motivation factors (Table 5). The multiple regression analysis showed three environmental motivation factors to be significantly predictive of the loyalty variable: parking (at the .01 level), convenient facilities (at the .01 level), and food and beverage services (at the .05 level).  The regression model explained 38.9% of variance.

The results of correlation analyses indicated correlations among the environmental motivation factors (Table 6). Significant positive relationships were found among all environmental motivation items, as follows:

1. correlation between parking and stadium cleanliness, r  =  .697 (p < .01)

2. correlation between parking and convenient facilities, r = .567 (p < .01)

3. correlation between parking and food and beverage services, r  =  .489 (p < .01)

4. correlation between parking and fan control, r = .598 (p < .01)

5. correlation between parking and team loyalty, r = .499 (p < .01)

6. correlation between stadium cleanliness and convenient facilities, r = .721 (p < .01)

7. correlation between stadium cleanliness and food and beverage services, r = .532 (p < .01)

8. correlation between stadium cleanliness and fan control, r = .673 (p < .01)

9. correlation between stadium cleanliness and team loyalty, r = .459 (p < .01)

10. correlation between convenient facilities and food and beverage services, r = .604 (p < .01)

11. correlation between convenient facilities and fan control, r = .745 (p < .01)

12. correlation between convenient facilities and team loyalty, r = .572 (p < .01)

Furthermore, significant positive relationships were found between food and beverage services and fan control (r  =  .710, p < .01), between food and beverage services and team loyalty (r = .482, p < .01), and between fan control and team loyalty (r = .531, p < .01). All correlations were significant at the .01 level.

Finally, one-way multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) were performed to compare the mean vector scores for the six environmental motivation items with respect to the behavioral variables. The structural coefficients were used to define a function based on an eigenvalue equal to .30, while the standardized coefficients were used to test redundancy of environmental motivation items (Pease & Zhang, 2001). The results of MANOVA showed significant effects on environmental motivation items both for attendance rate, Multivariate F(30, 1086) = .807, p = .001, and for ticket type, Multivariate F(36, 1188) = .811, p =.013. On the other hand, remaining MANOVA results indicated no significant effect for reason for following favorite teams, Multivariate F(42, 1265) = .868, p = .619, and no significant effect for preferred means of following favorite teams, Multivariate F(30, 1086) = .879, p = .224.

Specifically, respondents’ mean vector scores differed significantly,  at the .01 level, based on attendance rate for the preceding baseball season. The loyalty item was the main contributing factor: Respondents who had attended every home game of the preceding season had a higher mean. In addition, their mean vector scores differed significantly, at the .05 level, based on type of ticket used for game attendance. Two factors, parking and loyalty, were the main contributing factors. Respondents using single-game tickets had higher mean scores for parking and stadium cleanliness than did respondents using other kinds of tickets. Respondents using package tickets scored higher than other respondents on items pertaining to convenient facilities and fan control. Respondents who were guests of season ticket holders scored higher than other respondents on items pertaining to food and beverage services and team loyalty. Mean vector scores did not differ significantly, however, in terms of respondents’ reasons for following or preferred means of following a favorite team (Table 7).

Discussion and Recommendations

Mahony, Madrigal, and Howard (2000) have argued that a variety of marketing strategies should be applied with different types of sports consumers they refer to as “high loyal fans,” “spurious loyal fans,” “latent loyal fans,” and “low loyal fans.” Varied strategies are necessary in light of the different consumers’ differing motivations and/or reasons for attending professional sports events and making commitments to professional sports teams. The present study focused on sociodemographics and environmental motivation factors, knowledge of which may affect professional baseball franchises’ marketing strategies and frameworks. While the present study focused on residents of a state that hosts no major-league professional teams, its results may inform the development of efficient business concepts for minor-league professional teams.

The study respondents’ views on environmental motivation items suggest a number of ways to maintain fan satisfaction, perhaps thereby increasing attendance. The three most important concern stadium cleanliness, parking, and convenient facilities; relative satisfaction with these factors affects the likelihood that a spectator will return to the stadium in the future. Wakefield and Sloan’s similar results (1995) led them to advise MiLB administrators to emphasize efforts to ensure that parking, cleanliness, convenience, food and beverage services, and crowd control satisfy the baseball fans who attend games. The present study found, in particular, a correlation between team loyalty and the other environmental motivation factors, and loyalty of course plays one of the biggest roles in determining fans’ willingness to attend games. For this reason, administrators of MiLB teams should use a well-prepared stadium environment to appeal to each of Mahony, Madrigal, and Howard’s types of sports consumer.

Recommendations for future studies are, first, an extension of the scaled motivation items to include psychological and sociological motivation, adding for example promotional events, frequency of media exposure, family effects, and gambling factors. Second, the findings of this study suggest a link to be explored between baseball fans’ motivation to attend games and judgments about satisfaction with game attendance.

Table 1 Sociodemographic Characteristics, Frequency and Percentage

Table 2 Fan Behavior, Frequency and Percentage

Table 3 Relative Importance of Environmental Motivation Variables

Table 4 Importance of Environmental Motivation Factors by Alabama Residence vs. Nonresidence

Table 5 Multiple Regression Analysis Examining Relationship of Team Loyalty to Environmental Motivation

Table 6 Correlations Among Environmental Motivation Items

Table 7 Multivariate Analysis of Variance for Environmental Motivation Items with Respect to Behavioral Variables

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]Author Note[

Soonhwan Lee ; Cynthia Ryder, United States Sports Academy; Hee-Joon Shin