Expressive identity scale for football fans: validation and applications for sports management
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v80.118559Keywords:
community, expressiveness, fans, sport consumption, footballAbstract
Introduction: This article explores the externalisation of identity among sports fans. This can be referred to as the expressive component of identity and, although it is usually considered secondary, it plays a major role in the fan culture that characterises football clubs.
Objective: To develop and validate a specific scale to measure the expressive component of identity in fans of Spanish football teams, thus enabling its independent analysis.
Methodology: A questionnaire was administered to 401 participants from different football teams using convenience and snowball sampling in Madrid. After applying the instrument, which consists of 12 items adapted from international scales, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed, evaluating its reliability (alpha, omega), validity and gender invariance.
Results: Adequate levels of validity and reliability were shown for the scale developed, which has a three-factor structure: material expressiveness, positive word-of-mouth (WOM) and responsibility to the community.
Conclusions: The validated instrument allows the expressive component of identity in sports fans to be measured separately. This is extremely useful in research and club and brand management, as it allows for the segmentation of profiles, the orientation of marketing strategies, and the strengthening of fans' belonging and participation in the community. It is recommended that the study be replicated in other sports and cultural contexts to broaden its applicability.
References
Apostolopoulou, A., Papadimitriou, D., Synowka, D. y Clark, J. S. (2012). Consumption and meanings of team licensed merchandise. International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 12(1-2), 93-110. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJSMM.2012.051266
Baudrillard, J. (2009). La sociedad de consumo. Siglo XXI.
Bauman, Z. (2015). Modernidad líquida. Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Boateng, G. O., Neilands, T. B., Frongillo, E. A., Melgar-Quiñonez, H. R. y Young, S. L. (2018). Best practic-es for developing and validating scales for health, social, and behavioral research: A primer. Frontiers in Public Health, 6, 149. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00149
Bourdieu, P. (2016). La distinción. Criterios y bases sociales del gusto. Taurus.
Burke, P. J. y Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity theory. Oxford University Press.
Cain, M. K., Zhang, Z. y Yuan, K. H. (2017). Univariate and multivariate skewness and kurtosis for meas-uring nonnormality: Prevalence, influence, and estimation. Behavior Research Methods, 49(5), 1716-1735. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0814-1
Cea D'Ancona, M. Á. (1996). Metodología cuantitativa: estrategias y técnicas de investigación social. Síntesis.
Chadborn, D., Edwards, P. y Reysen, S. (2017). Displaying fan identity to make friends. Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media, 9(9), 87-97.
Clarke, J. (2006). Estilo. En S. Halls y T. Jefferson (Eds.), Rituales de resistencia. Subculturas juveniles en la Gran Bretaña de postguerra (271-292). Traficantes de sueños.
Cottingham, M. D. (2012). Interaction, ritual theory, and sports fans: Emotion, symbols, and solidarity. Sociology of Sport Journal, 29(2), 168-185. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.29.2.168
Fornell, C. y Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39-50. https://doi.org/10.2307/3151312
García Ferrando, M. (2006). Veinticinco años de análisis del comportamiento deportivo de la población española (1980-2005). Revista Internacional de Sociología, 64(44), 15–38. https://doi.org/10.3989/ris.2006.i44.26
Genchev, S. E., Gordon, G. y Wert-Gray, S. (2021). Male and Female Sports Fans: Team Identification, Satisfaction with Team Performance, and Consumption Behavior. Journal of Marketing Devel-opment and Competitiveness, 15(2). https://doi.org/10.33423/jmdc.v15i2.4329
Goffman, E. (2019). La presentación de la persona en la vida cotidiana. Amorrortu.
Giulianotti, R. (2002). Supporters, followers, fans, and flaneurs: A taxonomy of spectator identities in football. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 26(1), 25-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723502261003
Hancock, G. R. y An, J. (2020). A closed-form alternative for estimating omega reliability under unidi-mensionality. Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspective, 18, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/15366367.2019.1656049
Heere, B. y James, J. D. (2007a). Sports Teams and Their Communities: Examining the Influence of Ex-ternal Group Identities on Team Identity. Journal of Sport Management, 21(3), 319-337. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.21.3.319
Heere, B. y James, J. D. (2007b). Stepping outside the lines: Developing a multi-dimensional team identi-ty scale based on social identity theory. Sport Management Review, 10(1), 65-91. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1441-3523(07)70004-9
Jones, M. A. y Reynolds, K. E. (2006). The role of retailer interest on shopping behavior. Journal of Re-tailing, 82, 115-126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2005.05.001
Keller, K. L. (2003). Strategic brand management: Building, measuring and managing brand equity. Prentice-Hall.
Kline, R. B. (2015). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. Guilford Publications.
Kwon H, Pyun DY y Lim SH (2022). Relationship Between Team Identification and Consumption Be-haviors: Using a Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Psychology. 13, 869275. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.869275
Lianopoulos, Y., Karagiorgos, T., Ntovoli, A. y Kassis, V. (2025). Engaging fans in social media through team brand associations: the mediating role of sport team identification. Retos, 70, 1240–1254. https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v70.116836
Lloret, S., Ferreres, A., Hernández, A. y Tomás, I. (2014). El análisis factorial exploratorio de los ítems: Una guía práctica, revisada y actualizada. Anales de Psicología, 30, 1151-1169. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.30.3.199361
Lorenzo-Seva, U. y Ferrando, P. J. (2023). Manual of the program Factor. Universitat Rovira i Virgili.
Maffesoli, M. (2004). El tiempo de las tribus. Siglo XXI.
Mata, D. (2000). An anthropological study of the sport idol. Apunts. Educación Física y Deportes, 60, 78-94.
Melucci, A. (1996). The playing self: person and meaning in the planetary society. Cambridge Universi-ty Press.
Meyers, L. S., Gamst, G. y Guarino, A. J. (2016). Applied multivariate research: Design and interpreta-tion. Sage Publications.
Milfont, T. L. y Fischer, R. (2010). Testing measurement invariance across groups: Applications in cross-cultural research. International Journal of Psychological Research, 3(1), 111-130. https://doi.org/10.21500/20112084.857
Muniz, A. M. y O'Guinn, T. C. (2001). Brand community. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), 412-432. https://doi.org/10.1086/319618
Nunnally, J. C. (1978). Psychometric theory. McGraw-Hill.
Olivera, J. (1998). Del fútbol espectáculo al espectáculo deportivo. Apunts. Educación Física y Depor-tes, 52, 3-4.
Osborne, J. W. y Costello, A. B. (2004). Sample size and subject to item ratio in principal components analysis. Practical Assessment Research Evaluation, 9(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.7275/ktzq-jq66
Osborne, A. C. y Sarver, D. S. (2013). Performative sport fandom: An approach to retheorizing sport fans. Sport in Society, 16(5), 672-681. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2012.753523
Parsons, T. (1976). El sistema social. Biblioteca de la Revista de Occidente.
Prasetyo, A., Liu, L.-W. y Kulachai, W. (2025). ¿Qué factores influyen en la asistencia de público a even-tos deportivos? Una revisión sistemática de la literatura. Retos, 70, 331–342. https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v70.115151
Schau, H. J., Muñiz, A. M. y Arnold, E. J. (2009). How brand community practices create value. Journal of Marketing, 73(5), 30-51. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.73.5.30
Sennett, R. (1975). Vida urbana e identidad personal. Península.
Shreffler, M. B. y Ross, S. D. (2013). The word-of-mouth phenomenon: Its presence and impact in a sport setting. International Journal of Sport Communication, 6(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.6.1.1
Simmel, G. (2011). Filosofía de la moda. Casimiro.
Stroebel, T., Woratschek, H. y Durchholz, C. (2021). Clothes make the fan: the effect of team merchan-dise usage on team identification, fan satisfaction and team loyalty. Journal of Global Sport Management, 6(2), 185-202. https://doi.org/10.1080/24704067.2018.1531354
Sveinson, K., Clarkson, B., Parry, K., y Richards, J. (2025). “If you build it, they will buy it”: exploring consumer insights of professional women’s football merchandising strategies. Sport Manage-ment Review, 28(3), 575–599. https://doi.org/10.1080/14413523.2025.2490338
Tajfel, H. y Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. En J. T. Jost y J. Sida-nius (Eds.), Political psychology (pp. 276-293). Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203505984-16
Tsigilis, N., Lianopoulos, Y. y Theodorakis, N. D. (2023). Measuring identification with a sport team: An empirical comparison of the Sport Team Identification Scale with the Sport Spectator Identifi-cation Scale. International Journal of Sport Management, 24(2), 171-195.
Viladrich, C., Angulo-Brunet, A. y Doval, E. (2017). Un viaje alrededor de alfa y omega para estimar la fiabilidad de consistencia interna. Anales de Psicología, 33(3), 755–782. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.33.3.268401
Wann, D. L. y Branscombe, N. R. (1993). Sports fans: Measuring degree of identification with the team. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 24(1), 1–17.
Yoshida, M., Gordon, B. S., Heere, B. y James, J. D. (2015). Fan community identification: An empirical examination of its outcomes in Japanese professional sport. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 24, 105-119. https://doi.org/10.1177/106169341502400204
Yüzgenç, A. A. ., Doğan, H. ., & Koç, M. C. . (2022). Examination of Turkish Football Fans’ Brand Evange-lism (Efangelism) Levels and Intention to Purchase. Pakistan Journal of Medical & Health Sci-ences, 16(2), 453. https://doi.org/10.53350/pjmhs22162453
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniel Alonso-Hernán, Monica Gomez-Suarez
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and ensure the magazine the right to be the first publication of the work as licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of authorship of the work and the initial publication in this magazine.
- Authors can establish separate additional agreements for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in the journal (eg, to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Is allowed and authors are encouraged to disseminate their work electronically (eg, in institutional repositories or on their own website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as to a subpoena more Early and more of published work (See The Effect of Open Access) (in English).
This journal provides immediate open access to its content (BOAI, http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess) on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The authors may download the papers from the journal website, or will be provided with the PDF version of the article via e-mail.
