Assessing the community beliefs about the corporate social responsibility practices of professional football clubs in China

This paper articulates the development of a scale to measure the expected CSR in professional football clubs from a community’s perspective and to explore the expectations of CSR in professional football clubs by Chinese citizens. An initial scale containing 39 items along eight dimensions was first developed before an empirical survey study was conducted in which data was collected from a sample of 300 residents from Shanghai. A CFA analysis and modification resulted in a seven-factor instrument of 29 items. Among the factors, ‘responsibility to spectators’ was rated the most important, followed by ‘youth educational initiatives’, ‘responsibility to employees’, ‘financial responsibility’; ‘health initiatives’, and ‘environmental initiatives’, with ‘philanthropic activities’ considered the least important factor.