Collective organisational publicness versus privateness in community sport: a national panel study of local authorities

ABSTRACT

Research question: The role and merit of publicness versus privateness in community sport provision is hotly contested in the sport management field, but is there a relationship between ownership types in local authorities’ community sport provision and sports participation levels?

Research methods: The study combines secondary data on sports participation with objective data on ownership types in community sport provision among local authorities in England, between 2009-2015. The panel model examines whether the mix of ownership types in community sport is associated with differences in reported sports participation levels.

Results and findings: The study reveals higher collective organisational publicness in community sport is associated with lower sports participation levels among local populations. The opposite is true of higher collective privateness in local authorities’ provision, where higher levels of sports participation are observed among local populations.

Implications: If local authorities are to influence sports participation levels among their populations, there is a need to better understand how community sport provision should be delivered. Informed by the findings, greater privateness in local authorities’ community sport provision is associated with higher sports participation levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Community sport
• collective organisational publicness
• local authorities
• sports participation
• privateness

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Professor Rhys Andrews for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The ONS defines gross disposable household income as the amount of money that that all of the individuals in the household sector have available for spending or saving after income distribution measures (for example, taxes, social contributions and benefits) have taken effect. Population estimates refer to the usually resident population. This can mean that estimates of population do not necessarily coincide with the number of people to be found in an area at a particular time of the day or year.

2 There are 343 local authorities in England classified as metropolitan districts, London boroughs and the City of London, unitary authorities plus Isles of Scilly, county councils and district councils (www.gov.co.uk).

3 A detailed explanation of differences between FE and RE models can be found in the works of Baltagi (2013) and Wooldridge (2018). In summary, the likelihood ratio tests whether a pooled regression is the correct estimation model in relation to a fixed effects model (rejecting the null hypothesis implies in inappropriateness of a pooled regression). Breusch and Pagan Lagrange Multiplier tests whether a pooled regression is the correct estimation model in relation to a random effects model (rejecting the null hypothesis implies in inappropriateness of a pooled regression). Finally, the Hausman test assists in choosing between a fixed or random effects model (rejecting the null hypothesis suggests that the random effects model should be used).

4 VIF values for each individual variable also corroborate the hypothesis of non-multicollinearity and are available on request.