The term ‘stigma’ originates from ancient Greece, where individuals, such as slaves, criminals, and traitors, were marked with symbols as a means of labeling and banishment. This act of marking constituted what is now referred to as stigma. Since Goffman’s seminal work in 1963, conceptualizing stigma as an inherently unreliable attribute that transforms an individual from a complete, ordinary person to one with a blemished character (Goffman, 1963) the definition of stigma has undergone several developments and supplements (Link and Phelan, 2001). Stafford and Scott (1986) and others have proposed that stigma involves characteristics opposite to societal norms. Drawing on Goffman’s definition, the concept of discrimination is subsequently introduced to refine the understanding of stigma, which is delineated as the ascription of undesirable traits to individuals. Link and Phelan (2001), in consolidating previous research, constructed modified concepts related to stigma, emphasizing its expansion into various facets of social life with societal development. Therefore, a multidimensional sociological exploration of the nature and consequences of stigma becomes crucial from a multidimensional sociological perspective.

Presently, Ongoing scholarly debates persist on the precise definition and mechanisms of stigma. Rooted in social psychology, ‘stigma’ is comprehended as personal attributes or labels deemed societal defects (Major and O'Brien, 2005). Individuals subjected to stigma are perceived as lacking certain normal attributes (Pescosolido and Martin, 2015). The formation mechanism of stigma involves public stigma, which impacts individuals through enacted stigma, perceived stigma, and internalized stigma, leading to self-stigmatization (Bos et al., 2013).

As stigma theory permeates various disciplines, marketing has witnessed corresponding research. In marketing, stigma is defined as negative labels, biases, and derogatory attributes associated with interest groups and their products or services for commercial purposes (Mirabito et al., 2016). Scholars, with a focus on consumer behavior, have delved into the impact of stigmatized products on consumer shopping behavior. For instance, Shin and Jin (2021) investigated the willingness of consumers, driven by social status pursuit, to purchase fur products amid increasing global animal protection awareness. Barlow et al. (2016) explored the influence of stigmatized products on the industry category, using craft beer in the United States as an example. Results consistently showed that both consumer group and product stigmatization significantly negatively affect shopping behavior.

Brands, like products, face stigmatization. Certain brand attributes can create impressions that may lead to brand stigma, such as the brand’s country of origin (Wang et al., 2004), brand category, or brand fit (Lafferty, 2007). In the current landscape, scholars propose that the resolution of industry stigma relies heavily on corporate social responsibility (CSR) tools, involving sponsorship or charitable actions to improve the tainted image of the industry (Palazzo and Richter, 2005).

Existing research on sports stigmatization predominantly concentrates on specific disciplines, groups, and brands, with a noticeable dearth of macro-level studies on the perception dimension of stigmatization in sports.

The examination of sports participation group stigmatization has been undertaken. Lee et al. (2021) employed attribution theory to investigate the mechanisms underpinning the formation of athlete group stigma and analyzed its resultant impacts. The study found that internal attribution, in comparison to external attribution, intensifies public stigma towards athletes, negatively affecting the willingness to purchase products associated with stigmatized athletes. Teachers, especially in physical education, face biases rooted in stereotypes, with sports teachers often associated with aggression (McCullick et al., 2010). Traditionally, physical education has been associated with ideals of toughness, strength, and competitiveness (White and Hobson, 2017). Under this paradigm, male physical education teachers are sometimes unfairly characterized as overly aggressive or unrefined in their leadership, while female physical education teachers may be stigmatized as exhibiting masculine traits—often labeled as tomboys or even as homosexual. These negative stereotypes have been perpetuated and amplified by portrayals in film and television over time (McCullick et al., 2010; Walton-Fisette et al., 2017).

In addition to sports participation group stigmatization, published studies also research on the stigmatization of specific sports disciplines. Taking disc golf as an example, media and reports often portray it as a non-competitive and non-intensive sport, contributing to its stigmatization (McGinnis et al., 2016). Despite efforts to reduce land use and environmental impact, disc golf is still labeled by environmental organizations as a damaging activity, resulting in defamation and stigma (McCullick et al., 2010). There are also studies focusing on the stigma experienced by professional cyclists within the context of clean sports. The excessive use of banned substances in past competitions, coupled with inadequate regulation, generated negative impressions, leading to stigma associated with professional cycling and its athletes. The study discussed and summarized the coping measures of professional cyclists under stigma, categorized into self-restraint, strengthened supervision, and social advocacy stigma resolution chain (Sefiha, 2017).

Concerning sports brand stigmatization, brand image, as a crucial intangible asset (Aaker and Keller, 1990), serves as a comprehensive evaluation and reflection of consumer perceptions of product characteristics and the overall spirit of the enterprise. Brand stigmatization occurs when consumers impose negative labels on a brand, damaging its image and reputation. Gerke et al. (2014) focusing on the country of origin’s impression, used outdoor sports brands from New Zealand as an example, demonstrating that consumer perceptions transfer specific impressions of the brand’s home country to the sports brand and its products. The higher the consistency between brand products and the consumer’s perception of the brand’s home country, the greater the consumer’s approval of the sports brand and its products, influencing purchasing behavior.

Finally, stigmatization related to group attributes involves gender, sexual orientation, body shape, and social status. These factors may incur varying degrees of stigma, impacting sports participation. In the realm of sports, diversity efforts are primarily propelled by commercial interests rather than a social justice framework (Hartmann-Tews, 2023). Consequently, sexual minority groups such as ‘LGBTQ+’ lack commercial interests, leading to negative societal and market responses and exacerbating the unfair treatment of sexual minority groups in sports (Baeth et al., 2023; Denison et al., 2021). Thedinga et al. (2021) asserted that individuals with obesity often face shame and discrimination related to weight in sports and exercise environments, leading them to cope with these experiences by excluding themselves from sports and exercise.

Scholars have investigated various factors influencing the choice of sports disciplines at different levels, broadly categorized as intrinsic and extrinsic factors.

Starting from intrinsic factors, Casper et al. (2011) constructed a model based on ecological system theory, highlighted the impact of participants’ preferences, personalities, and habits, in addition to external factors from school and family, on their sports participation and disciplines selection. Bevan et al. (2022) identified social psychological factors, such as anxiety about physique and appearance, as influencing individuals’ concepts and choices in sports participation, which exacerbate self-stigmatization and hinder their love for and involvement in sports (Somerset and Hoare, 2018).

The selection of sports activities by individuals is also influenced by external factors, such as the life stage of the participants and societal evaluations of the particular sport (Kamphuis et al., 2008; Pot et al., 2014). These external elements play a significant role in shaping people’s choices in sports participation. Jenkin et al. (2017) found that the selection of sports disciplines by the elderly is influenced by factors such as the practicality of sports disciplines, health benefits, and participation costs. Additionally, the gender ratio within the school can also influence students’ choices and participation in sports disciplines. Gender imbalance may lead schools to prioritize providing sports resources for the gender-dominant group, thereby influencing students’ choices and involvement in sports disciplines (Ferry and Lund, 2018).

In summary, stigmatization is a multifaceted structure encompassing perceptual, categorical, and reactive dimensions. When a particular sport is stigmatized, it weakens the public’s perception of the sport, causing certain sports participation groups to fall into a ‘self-stigmatization’ trap. This impedes the socialization process of the sports disciplines and subsequently affects the development of the disciplines associated industries. Reflecting on past literature, this paper observes a concentration on sports teachers, specific sports disciplines, sports brands, and stigmatized groups. The emphasis on pathways to resolve stigma is evident, but a systematic study of the perception dimensions of stigmatization in sports disciplines at a macro level is lacking. Therefore, this paper adopts a mixed research method, presenting two research objectives. The first, grounded in grounded theory, aims to elucidate the perceptual dimensions of stigmatization in sports disciplines. The second, through questionnaire data collection, utilizes structural equation modeling to analyze the influence of various dimensions on the degree of perceived stigma in sports disciplines. The conclusions drawn from this study will broaden the research boundaries of stigmatization in sports disciplines and provide theoretical guidance for the positive development of sports disciplines.

Grounded theory referred to the adoption of a bottom-up research approach, employing a systematic inductive analysis procedure. Based on empirical data, it sought to identify core concepts relevant to the research problem, thereby constructing a rigorous and scientific theory (Charmaz, 2014). Procedural grounded theory emphasized human subjective understanding and highlighted the interconnection of existing experiences and hypothetical theories through causal relationships. This paper utilized the three-level coding of procedural grounded theory to analyze textual data obtained through in-depth interviews.

Grounded theory research required the use of purposive sampling in interviews to enhance result diversity (Gratton and Jones, 2004). Consequently, this study employed purposive sampling with specific inclusion criteria. Interviewees were selected based on their participation in or observation of at least one sports discipline within the past year and their familiarity with public perceptions or stereotypes surrounding certain sports. To ensure a diverse range of perspectives, potential participants were identified via established sports networks, online forums, university clubs, and social media groups. The research team directly contacted these individuals via email and messaging platforms, provided a detailed explanation of the study’s objectives, and obtained informed consent prior to conducting the interviews.

Strict adherence to ethical standards was maintained throughout the process—from the selection of interview subjects to the interview process and subsequent data handling—to ensure that participants’ personal privacy was fully protected. The interviews focused on three main aspects: (a) interview explanations, (b) basic information about interviewees, and (c) semi-structured interview questions, as outlined in Table 1. Informed consent was obtained from all participants, who were fully briefed on the purpose and content of the interviews, and participation was entirely voluntary. Participants were also assured of the confidentiality and privacy of their responses.

The interviews yielded a total of 36 interviewees. The data from 26 interviewees were transcribed into text, resulting in approximately 82,000 words of textual data. The procedural grounded theory method was employed to sequentially analyze the textual data, generating initial concepts, subcategories, and main categories, ultimately forming the dimensions of stigma perception in sports disciplines. The data from the remaining 10 interviewees were used to test theoretical saturation.

Open coding involved conceptualizing and categorizing acquired data by gradually organizing raw data based on specific principles. This process utilized concepts and categories to accurately represent the data’s content, resulting in the inductive summarization of abstract concepts. To streamline the analysis and minimize interference from complex textual data, the raw interview transcripts (82,000 words from 36 interviews) were rigorously cleaned by removing habitual phrases (e.g., colloquial fillers), irrelevant sentences, and content misaligned with interviewees’ original intentions. For instance, statements like “Discrimination is encountered when my technical skills in the sport are insufficient” were stripped of non-essential language and retained as core excerpts. Subsequently, the refined data underwent preliminary conceptualization. Through line-by-line analysis, 28 initial concepts were inductively extracted. Examples include: technical discrimination (e.g., exclusion due to skill level) and social motivation (e.g., participating to network with high-status individuals). These concepts were iteratively compared, refined, and grouped into 10 subcategories. Redundant or overlapping concepts (e.g., gender bias) were merged to ensure clarity. Table 2 illustrates this process, mapping interview excerpts to concepts (e.g., “body-shape discrimination” under Group Participation Behavior) and their evaluative properties (e.g., “good/bad”).

This study primarily used the expression ‘alphabet letter + number’ to code categories for subsequent analysis. In summary, the 10 subcategories finally organized were: Group Participation Behavior (a1), Group Participation Motivation (a2), Group Participation Image (a3), Contest Violations and Prohibitions (a4), Encroachment of Social Resources (a5), Deviant Offenses (a6), Negative Media Coverage (a7), Sporting Participatory Value (a8), Sporting Competitive Value (a9), Sporting Culture Value (a10).

Axial coding was the second stage of the coding process, involving continuous comparison and classification. It aimed to connect primary and secondary conceptual categories into a relational network. Based on this, this study synthesized the 10 subcategories into relational main categories through constant comparative analysis, this hierarchical aggregation resolved overlaps (merging Deviant Offenses and Contest Violations under Negative Events Stigma), resulting in three main categories: stigma of participant groups, stigma of discipline value, and stigma of negative events (see in Table 3).

Selective coding referred to the process of choosing core concepts within the identified categories. Through continuous analysis, secondary concepts related to the core categories were concentrated, systematically explained, and the relationships between the main and secondary concepts were verified. Ultimately, the core category extracted was ‘Perception of Stigma in Sports.’ Based on this, the paper identified three dimensions of stigma perception in sports: stigma associated with participant groups, stigma related to negative events, and stigma related to the value of the sports disciplines.

The saturation test of the theory examined whether the concepts and categories proposed at each level of coding were sufficient. It involved progressively abstracting, summarizing, and inducing from the initial data. If the relevant codes did not generate new concepts, it indicated that the theoretical model was relatively saturated and passed the saturation test. In this study, coding analysis was performed on the remaining 10 transcripts of in-depth interviews. The results showed that the latest coded concepts could be entirely incorporated into existing concept codes without generating new concepts and categories. Therefore, it could be considered that the theoretical model had achieved saturation.

In study 2, we employed online survey method, utilizing the ‘Wenjuanxing’ platform for distribution and preliminary data processing. Wenjuanxing platform, a secure and widely used tool for academic research in China. The platform ensures participant anonymity, encrypts data transmission, and provides automated filtering of invalid responses (e.g., duplicate IP addresses or inconsistent answers to attention-check questions).To ensure the authenticity and validity of the data, two control questions were included in the questionnaire to filter out invalid responses. A total of 450 questionnaires were distributed, and after excluding those with incorrect answers to the control questions, 363 valid responses were retained, resulting in an effective response rate of 81%. The study adhered strictly to ethical standards, informing participants about the guidelines and purpose of the questionnaire after obtaining their consent.

SPSS 26.0 was employed to perform a reliability analysis on the scale. The results revealed an internal consistency reliability of 0.713 for the overall scale. For Participant group stigma, Negative events stigma, Disciplines value stigma, Social identity, and Disciplines participation willingness, the internal consistency reliabilities were 0.936, 0.931, 0.925, 0.935, and 0.963, respectively. These results affirm the reliability and stability of the constructed scale for the perception dimensions of sports disciplines stigmatization (see in Table 4).

After confirming the reliability of the scale, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). First, we performed the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and Bartlett’s test of sphericity on the scale items. A KMO value greater than 0.7 and a Bartlett’s test p-value less than 0.01 indicate a high level of reliability for the scale (see in Table 5), allowing us to proceed with the factor analysis.

Using principal component analysis and the varimax rotation method, we extracted factors from the 24 items based on eigenvalues greater than 1. Five common factors were extracted from the 24 items, with a cumulative variance contribution rate of 80.015%, which exceeds the 60% threshold. This indicates that the five factors explain 80.015% of the variance of the 24 items. The detailed results of the exploratory factor analysis are presented in Table 6.

The results indicated that the three dimensions of perceived stigma in sports were significantly negatively correlated with both the willingness to participate in the sport and social identity. At the same time, social identity was significantly positively correlated with the willingness to participate in the sport. Additionally, the three dimensions of perceived sports stigma were significantly positively correlated with each other (see in Table 7).

Confirmatory factor analysis results showed: χ2 = 389.451, df = 242, χ2/df = 1.609, RMSEA = 0.041, GFI = 0.919, CFI = 0.982, IFI = 0.982, TLI = 0.980. Following the criteria for judging model goodness-of-fit, the output results of confirmatory factor analysis were all within an acceptable range (see in Table 8). Hence, it was evident that the sports disciplines stigma scale had good structural validity.

Subsequently, a structural equation model and path analysis were conducted. The results of the main effects analysis (see in Table 9) indicated significant negative effects of stigma associated with participant groups, negative events stigma, and disciplines value stigma on the willingness to participate in sports disciplines (β _{Participant group stigma} = −0.236, β _{Negative events stigma} = −0.303, β _{Disciplines value stigma} = −0.258). Considering the magnitude of the path coefficients, differences emerged in the impact of the three dimensions on the perception of stigma in sports disciplines. Stigma associated with negative events had the most substantial impact on willingness to participate, followed by disciplines value stigma, while participant group stigma had the smallest impact.

For the examination of mediation effects in the perception of stigma variables, the study employed the Bootstrap method using Amos Graphics with 5,000 resampling settings and a confidence level of 95%. To determine whether a variable has a mediation effect, it is crucial to observe whether the 95% confidence interval (95% CI) of the regression coefficient ab includes 0. If 0 is not included in the 95% CI, there is a mediation effect. If 0 is included in the 95% CI, there is no mediation effect. If both a, b, and c’ are significant, and the sign of ab is the same as c’, then a partial mediation effect is observed. If at least one of a and b is not significant, and the 95% CI of ab includes 0 (non-significant), then there is no significant mediation effect. According to Table 10, social identity partially mediates the impact of stigma associated with participant groups, negative events stigma, and disciplines value stigma on the public’s willingness to participate in sports disciplines.

The stigmatization perception dimensions of sports disciplines, constructed in this study, reveal that the perception of disciplines stigmatization is a multidimensional variable. Unlike previous studies that focused on specific sports groups or individual disciplines, the stigmatization perception dimensions of sports disciplines aim to comprehensively explain the stigmatization factors of various sports disciplines at the conceptual level of ‘sports.’ Compared to previous research, which emphasized the external environment and public opinion for the mitigation of sports disciplines stigmatization, this study highlights the need for a shared and collaborative governance responsibility among multiple stakeholders. Only through such an approach can effective governance and mitigation of sports disciplines stigmatization be achieved.

Next, this study emphasizes that public perception of sports disciplines stigmatization is a complex dimension involving various aspects of society, government, groups, and individuals. Therefore, the improvement and alleviation of stigmatization in sports disciplines cannot solely rely on government initiatives or disciplines associations. It requires a multi-party shared responsibility and collaborative governance to efficiently advance the governance and mitigation efforts of sports disciplines stigmatization.

Ultimately, the stigmatization perception dimensions of sports disciplines, introduced from the public’s perspective, focus on exploring public awareness of stigmatized sports disciplines. We delve into the general perception dimensions of stigmatization in sports disciplines, offering a comprehensive interpretation of the stigmatization phenomena across various sports disciplines. From a theoretical perspective, this study provides an in-depth exploration of the sources of stigmatization perception dimensions in sports disciplines, moving beyond the study of specific disciplines or groups. In practical terms, the public’s perception of sports disciplines stigmatization is a complex dimension, and when faced with an already established stigmatization environment, the emphasis should not only be on the external environment and public opinion’s mitigation but also on the specific analysis of different sports disciplines. This includes seeking internal reforms and external environmental improvements as dual paths for the mitigation of stigmatization in sports disciplines.

At the same time, it is also important to emphasize the role of social identity in this process. Social identity not only serves as a transmitter of threats but also as a force for repair and reconciliation (Rees et al., 2015). A deeper understanding of the mediating role of social identity contributes to revealing the psychological mechanisms behind sports disciplines stigmatization and provides valuable insights for developing strategies to improve willingness to participate. This underscores the importance, in managing and promoting sports disciplines, of considering not only specific stigmatization factors but also individuals’ social identity and emotional aspects.

This study mainly focused on the general public’s perspective when exploring the perception dimensions of sports disciplines stigmatization. In terms of the selection of interviews and questionnaires, the selection of interviews and questionnaires is mainly aimed at the public, and there is a lack of emphasis on professional groups such as professional athletes, sports administrators and policy makers. In the face of the current situation that some sports in China are seriously polluted and the causes are complex, future studies need to further expand the sample scope and further extend the level of stigma perception of sports in the study of professional sports groups, so as to obtain richer conclusions. Also, future studies might explore the dynamic interplay between public perceptions and those held within professional circles. Understanding how stigmatization influences and is influenced by different stakeholders can provide valuable insights for developing targeted interventions and strategies to mitigate the negative effects associated with stigmatized sports.