An Exploratory Analysis of the Environmental Sustainability Performance Signaling Communications among North American Sport Organizations

Brian P. McCullough, Jamee Pelcher and Sylvia Trendafilova
Additional contact information
Brian P. McCullough: Management Department, Albers School of Business and Economics, Seattle University, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
Jamee Pelcher: KRSS Department, College of Education, Health & Human Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA
Sylvia Trendafilova: KRSS Department, College of Education, Health & Human Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: Sport organizations across North America promote and claim deep commitments to environmental issues through sustainability performance signaling. These signals are conveyed through external associations or memberships (e.g., Green Sports Alliance) or internally (e.g., environmental reports and communications). However, researchers have not explored this communication strategy as it relates to environmental initiatives in sport nor compared environmental communications of sport organizations from the major professional sport leagues in North America. We analyzed the websites of 147 North American sport organizations and their associated venue websites for environmental performance signaling communications. We found that only one sport organization featured an environmental report on its website, and 42 sport organizations highlighted environmental initiatives through dedicated webpages on the respective team or venue’s website. Predominately, these communications focused on fan engagement initiatives (i.e., awareness, participation) but lacked goal setting, measurement metrics, or performance summaries. We discuss these themes, the implications, and recommendations for how sustainability performance signaling can be better leveraged in the North American sport sector.

Keywords: sustainability performance signaling; website communications; environmental reports; North American professional sport (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1950/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1950/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:5:p:1950-:d:328196

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().