Fan Responses of Sponsored Environmental Sustainability Initiatives

The sport sector is advancing its efforts to be environmentally friendly. These efforts now include corporate sponsored environmental initiatives, yet fans’ responsiveness to such efforts remains unexamined. Specifically, in this study, the corporate-sponsored environmental initiatives of a college...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2022-11, Vol.14 (21), p.14062
Main Authors: McCullough, Brian P, Casper, Jonathan C, Kushner Smith, Danielle M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beliefs, opinions and attitudes
Business metrics
College football
College sports
Consumer behavior
Corporate sponsorship
Educational aspects
Environmental impact
Environmental protection
Environmental sustainability
Evaluation
Finance
Social aspects
Social responsibility
Sports
Sports management
Sports spectators
Sports sponsorship
Sustainability
Sustainable development
Trends
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The sport sector is advancing its efforts to be environmentally friendly. These efforts now include corporate sponsored environmental initiatives, yet fans’ responsiveness to such efforts remains unexamined. Specifically, in this study, the corporate-sponsored environmental initiatives of a college athletic department with an established history of environmental commitments were examined to evaluate the influence of a point of attachment, sport brand-sustainability fit, and receptivity to messaging on the sport organization’s desired outcomes of the campaign (i.e., sustainability behavioral, support for environmental initiative corporate partner). Data were collected from college football fans of an institution in the United States Midwest region using an internet-based survey after the 2019 football season (N = 548). We found that most of our hypotheses were supported. Specifically, attachment to athletics, athletics/sustainability fit, and ascription of responsibility to athletics explained 52.7% of the variance of receptivity to messaging from athletics. In turn, receptivity to sustainable messaging and behaviors explained 45.0% of the support for corporate partners. Our results show that sport practitioners should evaluate the ascription of responsibility their fans place on the sport organization to be environmentally responsible, increasing the receptivity of environmental messages and desired outcomes from such efforts. In addition, this study shows the versatility and applicability of the model to actual sponsored environmental sustainability campaigns of a sport organization.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su142114062