Slippery Slopes Report

How climate change is threatening the Winter Olympics

Produced in partnership with Loughborough University London

and Protect Our Winters UK.

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Sports for Nature: Setting a Baseline

A UNEP report, authored by many SEG members:

Madeleine Orr, Jack Pippard, Ugo Arbieu, Jonathan Casper, Tim Kellison, Jordan Howell, Walker Ross, Jessica Murfree, Brian McCullough, and Sylvia Trendafilova.

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Research

Here, we cover all research related to sport and the natural environment: the recent, the relevant, the revolutionary.

Our goal is to synthesize sport ecology research in one place, so researchers and practitioners have access to the latest information.

If you would like more information about any of the studies included here, please contact our team!

For students: We will help you find the original work (full length texts). Get in touch.

For academics: if you've published something about - or related to - sport ecology and we've missed it, get in touch.

Note: The SEG does not own the intellectual rights nor copyright to the texts discussed herein. We share summaries of relevant research, and cite the original work, to make academic articles more accessible to people outside the academic community.

This database is searchable - Start here

What can we learn from COVID-19 regarding managing crises?

The purpose of this article is to critically scope the resilience landscape to help further understand how studies on both international sports events (ISEs) specifically, and both sport and event management studies more generally, could be better informed by disaster management and resilience studies. Based on the scoping review of past and present studies within the domain of crisis and disaster management, a proposed thematic framework is introduced highlighting a series o

Making our footprint: Challenges to legitimizing sport ecology

McCullough and Kellison (2020) discuss the challenges that the sport sector encounters as it begins to embrace sport ecology among practitioners and academics. This book chapter is featured within a collection edited by Brian Wilson and Brad Millington on the politics surrounding sport and the environment. McCullough and Kellison focus on the politics of acceptance of sport ecology in the sport industry, as a whole, and more specifically, how academics can actively engage and

Water, Sports and Environmental Sustainability

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the issue of utilizing water resources to maintain grass sports fields during times of extreme drought. The discussion focuses on a major municipality outside of Toronto in southwestern Ontario, Canada. This region has been experiencing hotter summers and drought conditions, and should this trend continue, themunicipality will have to decide whether its available water resources should be used on its sports fields. To assist in making

Soil Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Australian Sports

Managed turf is a potential net source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including turf used on sports fields and at sport stadiums. While most studies to date have focused on non-sports turf, sports turf may pose an even greater risk of high GHG emissions due to the generally more intensive fertiliser, irrigation and mowing regimes. Using sophisticated automated chambers to capture nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) emissions from three sports fields in Melbourne, in sou

Olympic Games for Legacy and Sustainability

This research explores the links between remediating land for Olympic event spaces and the pursuit of legacy. In order to compensate for the costs and inconvenience originally incurred in hosting the Games, it explores ways in which the redevelopment of the sizeable spaces planned for the event takes its position in larger strategies intended to offer long-term benefits to the host city and community. The research explores six areas: 1) diverse nature of brownfield land and

On the Importance of Sport Sustainability Research at Community and Youth Levels

This commentary discussed the need for sport ecology research to consider contexts and theoretical perspectives outside of those heavily focused upon thus far. Specifically, it examines the amount of research on elite, professional organizations and suggests further research is needed to cover sport sustainability at the youth and community levels/ Most sport take place at this lower level and thus it has a large environmental impact (with different resources for addressing t

Marathon Runners for “Green” Donations (2019)

This paper explored if marathon runners care more about the quality of the nature they train in, as the environmental quality can connect to health benefits. Essentially, the research investigated active sport event participants if environmental perceptions can relate to motivational factors that reflect on health benefits from outdoor sport event participation, such as competitive and marathon running. Findings indicated motivations related to self-esteem, health benefits, a

The carbon footprint of active sport tourists (2018)

This paper discusses the annual carbon footprint of active sport tourists caused by snow-sport-related travel in the context of day trips, vacations, training courses, and competitions. In summary, the average annual carbon footprint of snow sport tourists was 431.6 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Boarders had a higher carbon footprint than skiers. This finding can be explained with the value–action gap and the low-cost hypothesis, suggesting that environmental att

Does regular physical activity influence climate change attitudes? (2020)

Many organizations, governments, and NGOs alike seek ways to best engage the broad public for meaningful and authentic actions to address climate change. There are various examples of this, but the challenge remains on what is deemed personally relevant to market segments – a question Trail and McCullough (in press, 2019) pose in their article. Also, other researchers note that exposure or regular interaction in or with nature can help increase an individual’s likelihood of i

Testing the sport participant sustainability behavior model (2019)

Sport and event managers have engaged in environmental sustainability efforts for the last several years with increasing sophistication. These fan engagement campaigns have varying outcomes from bringing awareness to the organization or event’s environmental sustainability initiatives to promoting sustainable behavioral change at events or in everyday life. It is common to know the exemplar organizations, but what is less common is understanding what makes campaigns successfu

On the potential impacts of climate change on baseball and cross-country skiing (2020)

While climate change is expected to have deleterious effects on human health, the economy, and despite evidence that climate change is already impacting sport, the impacts of climate change on sport remain under-researched. This article addresses that gap by using projections of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and known vulnerabilities of baseball and cross-country skiing to explore potential climate hazards facing both sports by 2065 and 2100.Findings: Potential hazards f

Sport ecology: Conceptualizing an emerging subdiscipline within sport management (2020)

This paper is the first formal introduction to sport ecology as a subdiscipline in sport management. Through a review of relevant literature, the authors reaffirm the notion that the relationship between sport and the natural environment is bidirectional, and trace the research that's been published to date along both sides of the bidirectional relationship (i.e. the environmental impact of sport, and the environment's impact on sport.) Then, the authors present arguments f

Measuring externalities: The next step to sustainability assessments (2020)

In this conceptual paper, the authors propose that there are two challenges with how sport organizations assess their environmental impact. The first challenge is inconsistent reporting. Compared to organizations in other industries, sport organizations do not subscribe to consistent reporting measures, leading to difficulties with measuring progress both within organization and across the sport industry. The second challenge is the scope of the assessment. The authors point

Comparing Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Games (2019)

As an understanding of "sustainability" and its application to the Olympic Games evolves, this study considered the sustainability objectives and outcomes of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in comparison to the sustainability plans for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Using a weighted sum assessment, the authors compared the sustainability scores for each host city's sustainability plans on along the various dimensions found in the Rio 2016 sustainability plan. Stories that have emer

Sustainability in mega-events: Beyond Qatar 2022 (2019).

This paper aims to survey previously published research's findings on environmental sustainability in sport mega-events and apply such lessons to the environmental sustainability plan for the 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup to be held in Qatar. In particular, this paper attempts to summarize such research to determine areas of opportunity, growth, challenge, and conflict for the environmental sustainability plan for this World Cup in order to ensure the best opportunity for the cre

Air pollution and attendance in the Chinese Super League (2019)

The authors explore the effect of air pollution (among other factors) on consumer behavior in the China’s most popular soccer league, the Chinese Super League (CSL). They conduct a regression analysis using air quality data and CSL match attendance from 2014–2016, and they find that air pollution has no significant effect on attendance. As the authors note, while this finding may yield an initial sense of relief from league and club management, it signals more troublesome con

Not everything is a contest: sport, nature sport, and friluftsliv (2019)

In this article, Howe engages in the debate of whether all sports are games and all games are contests. The latter argument is particularly controversial, as it implies that individuals engage in games in order to determine who is most skillful. Howe challenges these assumptions using the concept of friluftsliv, “an approach to nature-oriented activity in which the experience of the environment and self-in-environment is paramount” (p. 11), while cautioning readers of the inh

Outdoor life, nature experience, and sports in Norway (2019)

Gurholt and Broch investigate the debate that occurred in Norway between 2008–2009 following the national government’s proposed Markaloven, an Act of Parliament aimed at protecting Oslo’s urban forests (i.e., Marka) from development. The legislation reflected the concept of friluftsliv, “a core political, social and cultural value in Norway, rooted in the democratic principle of free public access to uncultivated public and private land” (p. 574). The authors conduct a media

Determinants of sustainability in ski resorts (2019)

Using survey data from 113 ski resort managers in Europe and North America, Kuščer and Dwyer respond to two research questions: (1) Which sustainability indicators are part of pillars and requirements of ski resort sustainability and (2) Which types of ski resorts are more effective in managing sustainability? The results of the study suggest larger ski resorts are better equipped to reduce environmental impacts per visitor; the authors reason that larger resorts tend to be m

Paying Attention to Self and Environment in Nature Sports (2019)

This paper is a personal response to Kevin Krein’s (2015) claim that the value of nature sports over traditional ones is that they offer intensity of sport experience in dynamic interaction between the athlete and natural features. Krein denies that intensity is derived from competitive conflict of individuals, and denies that nature sport derives its value from internal conflict within the athlete who carries out the activity. This paper responds directly to Krein by analysi

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NEW! Research Round Ups.

Each time our team members attend an academic conference to present our work, we will aim to share a Round-Up of the relevant new research here.

First installment:

NASSM 2020 Research Round-Up