The relationship between sport and the natural environment is bidirectional and critical to the production of sport products, events, and experiences. Researchers have studied sport and the natural environment within the various subdisciplines of sport management. However, given the changing climate and mounting public concern for the environment, there is pressure to reconsider the relevance and significance of the natural environment, which is taken for granted in managerial contexts. Reflecting the importance of the natural environment, the robustness of the current literature, and the potential for the future, we propose a new subdiscipline of sport management called sport ecology. Thus, we proposed, in this paper, a definition for sport ecology, (re)introduced key concepts related to this subdiscipline (e.g., sustainability, green), and highlighted the leading research that serves as the foundation for sport ecology. We concluded with a discussion on the ways sport ecology can inform—and be informed by—other subdisciplines of sport management.
Professional sport organizations are showing increasing interest in proenvironmental strategies, as evidenced in part by the recent incorporation of sustainable design in many facilities. This interest may be driven by the perceived positive outcomes associated with the triple bottom line (TBL), which illustrates the environmental, social, and economic benefits of proenvironmental initiatives. The TBL has been the subject of both acclaim and criticism by scholars and practitioners, and this study provides new insight into its appropriateness as a reflection of proenvironmental organizations' motives. Through standardized interviews, the authors found that professional sport organizations place particular emphasis on the TBL's social component, which represents the objectives of increasing environmental awareness among fans and attracting new consumers. This study contends that the TBL's three components are closely intertwined, and the implementation of commercial and social marketing strategies is necessary to attend to and realize the organizations' stated goal of maximizing all three components.
Direct democracy practices such as initiatives and referenda are increasingly ignored or circumvented by political leaders who allocate subsidies toward new professional sport stadium developments. In a democracy, such a means of governing may be problematic if the outcome is unrefiective of the public will. The existing literature makes several theoretical connections for this line of political decision-making, including urban growth machines and trustee-delegate representation. In this paper, these concepts are integrated with empirical evidence to support the conceptualization of civic paternalism, a term that provides partial description of the political decision-making process. Civic paternalists justify their decisions by arguing that a city's continued vibrancy and growth optimize community benefit while remaining acutely aware of their decisions' political consequences. We illustrate the concept of civic paternalism by drawing from interviews with political leaders associated with one of the most recent cases of the no-vote subsidy.The literature related to stadium financing and voting outcomes has ranged widely (cf.
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