Environmental perspectives of external stakeholders in sport

ABSTRACT

Research question

The purpose of this study was to analyze qualitative data to understand a sport organization’s external stakeholders’ (i.e. sport fans’, non-sport fans’/community members’) environmental attitudes, ascription of responsibility, and preferences for environmental initiatives that should be prioritized.

Research method

A purposive sampling technique was used to distribute an online survey through Qualtrics. As part of the broader survey, 100 respondents provided open-ended comments to three prompts related to environmental sustainability and/or sport, and these comments serve as the basis for this study.

Results and findings

Eight themes were established and resulted in the subdivision of sport-centric and political themes. Participants felt that both cities and sport organizations have responsibilities and platforms for supporting pro-environmental issues. Political attitudes influenced differences between respondents. There were preferences towards initiatives directly related to benefitting a sport organization and others to benefitting the community.

Implications

Our results can help fill the gap in the strategic approach sport practitioners take when deciding what environmental initiative(s) to prioritize based on data from stakeholder input and preferences. These initiatives could apply to both internal efforts and community engagement activities.

Research contribution

This is the first study to examine sport and non-sport fan responses to environmental sustainability issues in a sport context. Our findings inform future researchers who explore the response of stakeholders (e.g. fan, community members) to environmental initiatives in sport. Our findings can also lend to the creation of a sport-focused materiality assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Stakeholder perspectives
• environmental sustainability
• strategic planning
• fan engagement
• sport ecology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant from the International Olympic Committee – Olympic Studies Centre.