Are riding club members willing to pay or work for overall quality improvement?

Abstract

This study examines the willingness-to-pay (WTP) and the willingness-to-work (WTW) of German riding club members for overall quality improvement. This study employed an online questionnaire to gain insights from German non-profit riding club members. To the author's knowledge, this study is the first to include the concept of WTW (in terms of mandatory working hours, MWH) in the amateur sports context. The results show that, on average, the participants would be willing to pay €117.39 and would be willing to work 30.39 hours per year if overall quality were improved. Extrapolation leads to the result that all German riding club members together would be willing to pay €55,487,320 and would be willing to work 16,204,384 hours. Compared with the current aggregated membership fees and MWH, the potential surplus is €12,882,408 and 10,059,280 working hours. This study also determines and discusses factors that significantly influence the WTP and WTW.

Keywords:

• contingent valuation method
• equity theory
• non-profit riding clubs
• willingness-to-pay
• willingness-to-work
• quality improvement

Acknowledgement

The author thanks Alexander Dilger and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions that improved the quality of this paper. The author takes sole responsibility for any remaining errors.

Notes

1. The German Equestrian Federation is the national governing body for equestrian sports and horse breeding. With 708,890 members, the German Equestrian Federation ranked ninth among German umbrella organisations in 2013 (Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund [DOSB], 2013).

2. Hereafter, the phrase “riding club members” refers to members of a non-profit riding club belonging to the German Equestrian Federation.

3. For a more comprehensive literature overview, see Wicker and Hallman (2013b).

4. The data of this online survey and its description were also used for another study in German (Kiefer, 2013). However, the number of participants is different because some members answered during or after the completion of the first study.

5. Yellow pages with addresses around horses.

6. There is no comparison of income levels because the cited market analysis is from 2001 and includes the household net income in D-mark.