Investigating Sport Spectators’ Pro-Environmental Behaviours: A Case of the Canadian Open Tennis Tournament

Abstract

The sports sector is gaining increased attention on its reciprocal relationship with environmental challenges. While sporting events contribute significant environmental harm, they can also inspire sustainable action across mass audiences. Pro-environmental engagement among spectators of international tennis events remains an unexamined are, creating challenges to achieving positive environmental outcomes of these events. With the overarching goal of improving tennis tournaments’ spectator-focused pro-environmental strategies, the present study applied a Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) framework to guide an understanding of tennis spectators’ motivations and barriers to performing pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs). To understand tennis spectators’ PEB engagement, this research incorporated sort-and-weigh waste audits at the 2024 Toronto Canadian Open tennis tournament, while distributing in-person spectator surveys (N = 769). The survey included questions focused on PEB engagement, perceived motivations and barriers to performing the target PEBs. As well as questions on demographics and environmental protection values, which were used to assess whether there were differences in the reported factors influencing PEB engagement. Results revealed varying levels of engagement across behaviours. Less than a third of spectators reported use of the central waste sorting station (24.2%) and public transit (30.1%), while more than half reported use or intended use of the water refill stations (68.2%), while the waste audits revealed that landfill waste streams mostly (69.8%) consisted of recyclable and compostable materials. The results showed that commonly reported factors influencing tennis spectator PEB engagement included convenience, environmental protection, cost savings, and knowledge or awareness. In addition, chi-square and Mann-Whitney U analyses revealed significant differences in the importance of PEB predictors across demographics, environmental values, and prior PEB engagement with the target PEBs. The findings on predictors to tennis spectators’ PEBs shares similar trends to findings from other contexts, however this research also includes novel findings that add important insight into the CBSM framework. Specifically, the results show distinct differences between subgroups of spectators’ perception of important motivators and barriers to pro-environmental engagement. This adds important insight into the CBSM framework by highlighting the potential importance of incorporating segmentation into future campaigns. The findings can also be applied to build strategies for promoting PEB among tennis spectators.