Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice (ATSP) scale is a brief psychometric instrument developed by Peter Dickenson and Anne L. Souchon (2018) designed to measure macro-level evaluations of commercial sponsorship as a legitimate, beneficial, and acceptable marketing communication practice. While conventional sport and event marketing literature has historically concentrated on micro-level consumer outcomes—such as attitude toward a specific sponsor (attitude toward the brand), recall, or purchase intentions toward an individual brand—the ATSP scale quantifies the degree to which consumer exposure to specific sponsorship configurations influences systemic, generalized perceptions of sponsorship as an industry-wide practice. Developed and validated across two empirical studies in the context of professional rugby competition partnerships (Study 1: N = 263 university students; Study 2: N = 255 general consumers from European panels), the ATSP scale operationalizes macro-attitudinal spillover.

The instrument is structured as a unidimensional 3-item measure typically administered using a 7-point Likert or semantic differential response format. Psychometrically, the scale demonstrates robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha exceeding .80; composite reliability values surpassing established thresholds), substantial item factor loadings (all λ > .75), and well-established construct, convergent, and discriminant validity against related constructs such as attitude toward the property, attitude toward individual sponsors, perceived sponsor-event fit, and concurrent sponsor entitativity. The ATSP provides sport management researchers, advertising scholars, and marketing practitioners with a rigorous, parsimonious assessment tool for understanding how multi-sponsor portfolios, commercialization levels, and sponsor operational types (financers versus providers) cultivate or diminish broader societal and consumer goodwill toward commercial sponsorship as an institutional practice.

2. Keywords

Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice, ATSP, commercial sponsorship, advertising attitudes, sports marketing, entitativity, sponsorship portfolio, marketing communications, macro attitudes, psychometrics

3. Authors

The Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice (ATSP) scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and validated by:

• Peter Dickenson, Ph.D. — School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, United Kingdom. Specializing in consumer psychology, sport marketing, and concurrent sponsorship dynamics.
• Anne L. Souchon, Ph.D. — Professor of International Marketing, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom. Recognized internationally for her scholarship in marketing strategy, organizational listening, international business, and advanced psychometric measurement in marketing.

Correspondence regarding the foundational study is anchored in the academic affiliation at Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough LE11 3TU, United Kingdom, or via the publication channels of the Journal of Advertising.

4. Purpose

In modern marketing communications, corporate sponsorship represents an expenditure exceeding tens of billions of dollars annually. For decades, academic inquiry focused almost exclusively on idiosyncratic, brand-specific consequences. Researchers sought to discover whether sponsoring an Olympic Games, a FIFA World Cup, or a regional rugby tournament elevated brand recall, enhanced corporate brand equity, or stimulated purchase intent among event attendees and television audiences. However, this microscopic focus overlooked a crucial psychological phenomenon: consumers do not simply evaluate isolated corporate logos in a vacuum; they also form systemic, overarching attitudes toward commercial sponsorship as an institutional, socio-economic practice.

The explicit purpose of the Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice (ATSP) scale is to assess whether exposure to particular sponsorship structures—such as concurrent multi-sponsor portfolios, varying degrees of partner entitativity, and different functional categories of sponsors (e.g., in-kind product providers versus cash financers)—exerts an inductive, bottom-up generalizing effect on an individual’s global attitude toward sponsorship itself. Formulated within a sophisticated theoretical investigation of concurrent sponsorship dynamics, the ATSP captures whether marketing arrangements are perceived as valuable societal contributions (e.g., enabling community athletics, supporting professional sports ecosystems, and delivering public entertainment) or as hyper-commercialized, intrusive exploitation that erodes the authenticity of cultural and sporting institutions.

From an applied research perspective, the ATSP scale serves several vital diagnostic and empirical functions:

• Assessing Institutional Goodwill and Public Sentiment: It enables marketing scholars and policy analysts to gauge societal acceptance or cynicism regarding corporate commercialization within public and cultural spaces, including athletics, arts, and charitable endeavors.
• Evaluating Sponsorship Portfolio Architecture: Modern sports properties rarely feature a single exclusive sponsor; rather, they manage complex constellations of concurrent sponsors. The ATSP scale allows researchers to investigate whether cluttered, discordant, or low-entitativity sponsor portfolios trigger consumer wearout and skepticism that impairs not only specific partner brands, but also the broader credibility of the sponsorship medium.
• Examining Functional Categorization Effects: By distinguishing between corporate sponsors operating as transactional financers (pure monetary funding) and operational providers (furnishing vital technical equipment, athletic gear, nutrition, or infrastructure), the scale helps researchers model how different types of commercial engagement foster greater consumer legitimacy toward the entire discipline of sponsorship.
• Testing Micro-to-Macro Attitude Transfer: The scale acts as an essential dependent variable in structural equation models, testing how episodic consumer experiences with a single sporting event or commercial break aggregate into durable cognitive schemas regarding commercial sponsorship practices at large.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct captured by the ATSP scale is located within the domain of social cognition, specifically drawing upon macro-level attitudinal theory and categorization processes. In psychometrics and consumer behavior, attitudes are defined as enduring evaluations—ranging from positive to negative—of people, objects, practices, or abstract ideas. While an attitude toward an ad ($A_{Ad}$) or an attitude toward a specific sponsor ($A_{Sp}$) represents a micro-level evaluative judgment of a discrete, concrete stimulus, Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice (ATSP) is an abstract, macro-level attitude directed toward an entire communication channel.

Theoretical Dimensions of the Construct

The ATSP construct is conceptualized unidimensionally, yet it captures three deeply integrated cognitive and affective facets of consumer perception:

• Institutional Legitimacy and Social Value: The perception that corporate sponsorship is a necessary, productive, and legitimate economic mechanism that provides vital resources to sports, culture, and entertainment properties. Consumers who score high on this dimension recognize sponsorship not merely as corporate promotion, but as an essential mutualism that enhances the quality and accessibility of the sponsored property.
• Affective Valence Toward the Medium: The positive emotional predisposition toward the presence of corporate sponsors. This reflects consumer comfort, warmth, and goodwill toward commercial partnerships, contrasted with feelings of intrusion, annoyance, or commercial cynicism.
• Systemic Approval versus Commercial Exploitation: The normative assessment regarding whether commercial sponsorship operates ethically and harmoniously within cultural domains, or whether it crosses normative boundaries into excessive commercialization, commodification, and opportunistic exploitation.

Psychological Generalization Mechanisms

The cognitive underpinnings of the ATSP construct depend heavily on attitude generalization and inductive inference. When an individual witnesses a specific sponsorship implementation—for instance, an apparel brand providing high-performance uniforms to an underdog national rugby team—the affective and cognitive evaluations triggered by that concrete event are processed through episodic memory. Through iterative exposure and schema abstraction, these localized evaluations inform the respondent’s broader, semantic category knowledge regarding “commercial sponsorship as an entire business discipline.”

Conversely, when a sports property displays excessive, uncoordinated, and purely transactional sponsor clutter, consumer skepticism is activated. According to Friestad and Wright’s Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM), consumers deploy persuasion coping mechanisms when they detect overt, mercenary corporate attempts at persuasion. Under conditions of poorly integrated concurrent sponsorship, consumers not only devalue the specific participating brands, but also experience a negative updating of their macro-level attitude toward sponsorship as a general practice. The ATSP scale was specifically constructed to quantify this upward generalization parameter.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice (ATSP) scale is anchored in an intersection of three major psychological frameworks: Campbell’s Entitativity Theory, Categorization and Schema Generalization Theory, and Affective Transfer and Balance Models.

Campbell’s Theory of Entitativity

The primary theoretical driver behind Dickenson and Souchon’s (2018) empirical development was entitativity, a concept introduced by Donald T. Campbell (1958) to describe the degree to which a collection of disparate individuals or elements is perceived as having the nature of a real, coherent, and unified group or entity. Campbell posited that external observers rely on Gestalt perceptual cues—such as common fate, similarity, and proximity—to infer that multiple entities belong together as an integrated whole.

In concurrent sponsorship contexts, properties rarely host a single commercial partner; rather, multiple corporate brands occupy the same physical and visual space (e.g., stadium signage, jersey panels, digital banners). Dickenson and Souchon extended entitativity from social psychology to marketing portfolio analysis. When concurrent sponsors exhibit high entitativity—such as visual coherence, aligned organizational objectives, or functional synergy—consumers perceive the multi-sponsor group as a coordinated unit. This perceived groupness simplifies cognitive processing, reduces perceived clutter, and attenuates commercial cynicism, facilitating a positive cognitive pathway that enhances not only brand-level evaluations, but also general attitudes toward the practice of sponsorship itself.

Categorization Theory and Attitude Generalization

Categorization theory (Rosch, 1978) posits that human cognition organizes information into hierarchical taxonomic structures, progressing from subordinate levels (specific exemplars, such as “Brand X sponsoring Team Y”) to basic levels (“sports sponsorship”) and superordinate levels (“commercial marketing practices”). Evaluative reactions formed at the subordinate exemplar level systematically percolate upward to inform higher-order conceptual categories.

In the framework established by Dickenson and Souchon, consumer encounters with specific sponsorship pairings act as episodic exemplars. If an encounter is perceived as authentic, functionally appropriate (e.g., an equipment provider supplying critical athletic materials), and entitative, the positive attributes of that exemplar are incorporated into the abstract schema governing sponsorship. The ATSP scale operates precisely at this superordinate category level, capturing the consolidated, generalized cognitive structure that results from cumulative or salient exemplar exposure.

The Persuasion Knowledge Model and Commercial Skepticism

Complementing entitativity and categorization is Friestad and Wright’s (1994) Persuasion Knowledge Model. The PKM asserts that over time, consumers accumulate intuitive theories about how, why, and when marketers attempt to influence them. When sponsorship executions appear discordant, intrusive, or strictly mercenary (e.g., low-fit financers seeking purely speculative promotional exposure), consumers perceive commercial opportunistic exploitation. This activates critical persuasion knowledge, prompting individuals to discount the practice as a whole. Conversely, when sponsors demonstrate functional embeddedness and collective harmony, persuasion defenses remain dormant, leading consumers to view the practice as an authentic, mutually beneficial collaboration.

7. Validity

The construct validity of the ATSP scale has been demonstrated across rigorous empirical studies utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across diverse European respondent samples.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was established through extensive validation procedures detailed in Dickenson and Souchon (2018). In their primary empirical investigations—encompassing an experimental student sample (Study 1, N = 263) and an independent consumer panel sample (Study 2, N = 255) evaluating actual concurrent sponsors within professional European rugby tournaments—the ATSP scale displayed exceptional convergent validity:

• Factor Loadings: Standardized factor loadings (λ) for all three ATSP items exceeded the recommended .70 threshold, demonstrating that the individual survey items share a substantial proportion of common variance with the underlying latent construct.
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): The Average Variance Extracted for the ATSP construct comfortably surpassed the standard benchmark of .50 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981), indicating that the variance captured by the construct exceeds the variance attributable to measurement error.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Composite reliability values exceeded .80 across independent empirical iterations, providing corroborating mathematical evidence of internal construct integrity.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established using the rigorous Fornell-Larcker criterion and cross-loading assessments. The ATSP scale successfully demonstrated empirical distinctiveness from several theoretically adjacent, highly correlated constructs:

• Attitude Toward the Sponsor ($A_{Sp}$): While consumers may hold a favorable view of a specific multinational corporation, the ATSP uniquely captures sentiment toward the vehicle of sponsorship itself, demonstrating that individual brand preference does not confound broader institutional appraisal.
• Attitude Toward the Property ($A_{Prop}$): Deep psychological loyalty, attachment, or affinity toward a rugby tournament or athletic team was statistically separated from attitudes toward the practice of sponsoring that property.
• Perceived Sponsor-Event Fit: Perceived cognitive congruity between a brand and an event represents an associative antecedent, whereas ATSP represents an evaluative generalized outcome. The square root of the ATSP’s AVE was significantly higher than its correlations with perceived fit dimensions.
• Perceived Entitativity: Measures assessing whether concurrent sponsors appeared as a unified, cohesive whole correlated positively with ATSP, but remained distinctly separable factors in multi-group confirmatory factor models.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity was verified by testing structural paths within comprehensive theoretical models. The ATSP scale behaved exactly as postulated by attitude-transfer theory: variations in concurrent sponsor entitativity and functional sponsor types (providers versus financers) significantly predicted variations in ATSP scores. Furthermore, higher scores on the ATSP scale predicted downstream favorable behavioral intentions and broader brand tolerance, demonstrating that individuals who view sponsorship positively as an institution exhibit greater responsiveness to marketing stimuli.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the ATSP scale has been demonstrated across independent empirical samples, confirming high internal consistency across diverse respondent cohorts.

Internal Consistency Metrics

In psychometric evaluation, scales designed for structural equation modeling must meet stringent thresholds to ensure measurement stability. Across the foundational studies reported by Dickenson and Souchon (2018), the ATSP scale exhibited exemplary internal consistency:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): The scale achieved Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently exceeding the conventional .80 criterion for exploratory and confirmatory research (typically observing α values between .82 and .88 across Study 1 and Study 2). This indicates that the 3-item measure possesses high internal coherence without exhibiting the item redundancy often observed in overly lengthy scales.
• Composite Reliability (CR): To address potential limitations of Cronbach’s alpha regarding tau-equivalence assumptions, composite reliability was systematically evaluated within a CFA framework. The CR values across both student (N = 263) and European consumer panel (N = 255) datasets consistently surpassed .80, well above the standard .70 reliability threshold advocated in psychological and consumer research.

Stability Across Diverse Subpopulations

The scale maintained consistent psychometric properties across distinct demographic and contextual cohorts. Whether tested among university-enrolled students evaluating experimental laboratory stimuli or among broader adult consumer panels assessing real-world athletic competition sponsors, the inter-item correlations remained consistently strong and uniform, confirming the structural stability of the scale across differing demographic profiles.

9. Factor Analysis

The dimensionality of the ATSP scale was validated through structural equation modeling techniques, specifically Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) conducted via statistical packages such as AMOS and LISREL.

Confirmatory Factor Structure

A single-factor measurement model was specified wherein all three operational items were hypothesized to load onto a single first-order latent construct representing Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice. Maximum Likelihood estimation was employed to assess model parameters.

Model Fit Indices

Across both empirical testing samples reported in Dickenson and Souchon (2018), the single-factor measurement model demonstrated exceptional global goodness-of-fit indices, satisfying the most stringent criteria established by Hu and Bentler (1999):

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): Ratios fell well below the conservative threshold of 3.0 (and frequently below 2.0), indicating minimal divergence between the observed and model-implied covariance matrices.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): CFI values exceeded .97, demonstrating superior model fit when compared against an independent baseline model.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) / Non-Normed Fit Index (NNFI): Values surpassed .95, confirming that model parsimony did not compromise explanatory adequacy.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): RMSEA values were consistently below .06 (with 90% confidence intervals bounded within acceptable ranges), reflecting negligible approximation error in the population.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): SRMR coefficients remained below .04, affirming that residual covariances were exceptionally small.

Factor Loadings and Parameter Estimates

The standardized factor loadings (λ) for the three items were uniformly strong, statistically significant (p < .001), and free of cross-loading ambiguities when estimated in conjunction with larger measurement models incorporating concurrent sponsor entitativity, property attitude, and individual brand attitude constructs. The empirical parameters confirm that the ATSP scale is an exceptionally clean, unidimensional psychological measurement instrument.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Attitude Toward Sponsorship as a Practice instrument are organized as follows:

• Psychometric Classification: Self-report macro-attitudinal inventory; unidimensional cognitive-affective rating scale.
• Respondent Target Population: General consumer populations, sports event attendees, television viewers, and marketing experimental participants.
• Item Inventory Length: Exactly three (3) standardized psychometric items.
• Response Format: Structured typically along a 7-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree) or a 7-point semantic differential scale anchored by opposing evaluative adjectives (e.g., Negative / Positive, Unfavorable / Favorable, Bad / Good).
• Estimated Administration Duration: Less than 60 seconds, ensuring minimal respondent burden and high suitability for inclusion in lengthy multi-construct survey batteries.
• Scoring Protocol:
  • Verify that all items are aligned in the same positive evaluative direction. If any negatively phrased item is utilized, reverse-code that item ($X_{reversed} = 8 – X$).
  • Calculate the overall ATSP score by computing the arithmetic mean across the three items:

  $$\text{ATSP Score} = \frac{\text{Item}_1 + \text{Item}_2 + \text{Item}_3}{3}$$

  • Higher composite mean scores (approaching 7.0) indicate a highly favorable, supportive attitude toward commercial sponsorship as an institutional practice.
  • Lower composite mean scores (approaching 1.0) reflect skepticism, commercial wearout, or aversion toward sponsorship as an industry practice.
  • Alternatively, in structural equation modeling (SEM), the three manifest indicators can be used directly to estimate the latent ATSP construct without prior summation.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Formal Publication: 2018.
• Original Publication Context: Journal of Advertising, Volume 47, Issue 3, pages 213–236.
• Copyright Ownership: The conceptual and theoretical operationalization is held by the authors, Peter Dickenson and Anne L. Souchon, with journal copyright maintained by the American Academy of Advertising, published by Routledge / Taylor & Francis Group.
• Licensing and Academic Usage Permissions: The ATSP scale was published for scholarly investigation within an academic peer-reviewed journal. Academic researchers, graduate students, and university faculties may typically utilize the scale for non-commercial educational and research purposes under standard academic fair-use guidelines, provided full formal citation and attribution are accorded to Dickenson and Souchon (2018).
• Commercial Applications: Commercial market research agencies, proprietary polling organizations, and corporate entities intending to deploy the scale within commercial brand equity audits should review licensing permissions via Taylor & Francis or contact the corresponding authors directly.
• Fee: There are no licensing fees associated with non-commercial academic research deployment.

12. References

• Campbell, D. T. (1958). Common fate, similarity, and other indices of the status of aggregates of persons as social entities. Behavioral Science, 3(1), 14–25. https://doi.org/10.1002/bs.3830030103
• Dickenson, P., & Souchon, A. L. (2018). Entitativity of concurrent sponsors: Implications for properties and sponsors. Journal of Advertising, 47(3), 213–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2018.1451859
• Fornell, C., & 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/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/209380
• Hu, L. T., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
• Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and Categorization (pp. 27–48). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Speed, R., & Thompson, P. (2000). Determinants of sports sponsorship response. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28(2), 226–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070300282004

13. Items of the Scale