Enhancing the stability of the leisure nostalgia scale: assessment of the measurement invariance between two different leisure populations

ABSTRACT

Nostalgia has recently garnered attention in the field of leisure, and a leisure nostalgia scale (LNS) has been developed. However, the LNS was initially developed and validated in one Eastern country, Singapore, and has not been tested with other populations for its applicability. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the invariance of the LNS to determine if the specified factorial structure of the scale is identical across different leisure populations in the UK and Singapore. The results showed that the LNS presented the same number of factors from the UK and Singapore data sets and supported the stability of the LNS factor structure, indicating that it can be confidently applied across different leisure populations from different countries. Although the LNS was fairly invariant across the two data sets, the findings revealed three items in socialisation and three items in personal identity to be non-invariant. The results of this study contribute to expanding future nostalgia research and a deeper understanding of leisure nostalgia.

KEYWORDS:

• Leisure
• nostalgia
• scale development
• external validation
• measurement invariance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University under Grant SUG-NAP 1/17 CHT.

Notes on contributors

Heetae Cho

Heetae Cho is an Assistant Professor of Physical Education and Sports Sciences at Nanyang Technological University. The primary focus of his research is to understand sport tourists’ behavior, specifically sporting event attendees, and to study the importance of social, environmental, cultural, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral impacts of sport tourism on communities and society. The large concern of his research is nostalgia, including conceptual analysis of nostalgia, a role of nostalgia, types of nostalgia, and levels of nostalgia.

Do Young Pyun

Do Young Pyun is with School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University in the UK. His research lies in the field of sport marketing and management and advances the understanding of consumers’ cognitive and affective structures in various sport contexts.

Seung Hyun Lim

Seung Hyun Lim is a PhD student in School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University, UK. His research focuses on an impact of sport participation during adolescence on sport consumption in later life.