Are sport organisations environmentally sustainable? – A website analysis of sport federations in Belgium

Environmental matters in sport: sustainable research in the academy

“…Whilst, not all submissions could be accommodated in this special issue, it nontheless marks a significant step toward addressing environmental matters in sport. The special issue covers a range of topics, including the response of sport governance to address environmental sustainability (Gammelsaeter & Loland, 2022;Hugaerts et al, 2022), climate adaptation (Dingle et al, 2022), stakeholder engagement (McCullough & Trail, 2022), and a review of environmental sustainability in sport (Cury et al, 2022). Cury et al (2022) open the special issue with a systematic review of literature that builds on prior reviews but bridges an important gap to identify the methodological and theoretical patterns of sport and the natural environment literature.…”

“…The second article in this special issue focusses on institutional behaviour. In particular, Hugaerts et al (2022) investigated the role of sport federations and their associated environmental initiatives and strategies in a Belgian context. The authors performed a content analysis of sport federation's websites.…”

Sustainable behaviours of physical activity and sport practitioners – scale validation

“…As well known, sport and physical activity is a very important tool for sustainable development (Campillo-S anchez et al, 2021;Hugaerts et al, 2022). Not only from the point of view of sports management and organization through the implementation of sustainable practices (Jensen, 2021), or through physical and sports activity itself, improving the health of the practitioners, but also by using sport and physical activity as a platform to influence participants/spectators to engage in more sustainable behaviours (McCullough et al, 2020).…”

“…Under this framework, sports entities could take advantage of sport's ability to generate affinity between them and their fans to influence and promote more sustainable attitudes among them (Trendafilova and McCullough, 2018;Cayolla et al, 2023), and engage people in sustainability-related issues, thereby creating greater interest and knowledge about sustainability among groups that were not, or may not be, initially interested or engaged (Orr et al, 2020). However, after years in which sustainability has been a topic of interest in the academic literature (Hugaerts et al, 2022), and public interest in sustainability-related issues has been increased ( Alvarez and Vega, 2009), because of the agenda 2030 appearance, climate change and different action taken by governments or different companies. Various studies (Dujisin, 2020;Orr et al, 2020;Portman and Zhulpa-Camporesi, 2020;Martins et al, 2021) show that there is still a lack of knowledge about sustainability issues, not only among practitioners/ followers of physical activity and sport, which is worrying, but also among sport managers (Trendafilova et al, 2014;Hugaerts et al, 2022).…”

“…However, after years in which sustainability has been a topic of interest in the academic literature (Hugaerts et al, 2022), and public interest in sustainability-related issues has been increased ( Alvarez and Vega, 2009), because of the agenda 2030 appearance, climate change and different action taken by governments or different companies. Various studies (Dujisin, 2020;Orr et al, 2020;Portman and Zhulpa-Camporesi, 2020;Martins et al, 2021) show that there is still a lack of knowledge about sustainability issues, not only among practitioners/ followers of physical activity and sport, which is worrying, but also among sport managers (Trendafilova et al, 2014;Hugaerts et al, 2022). This is an aspect that must be taken into account since sustainable attitudes and behaviours are directly influenced by the knowledge, motivation and ability of the subjects to generate an effective change ( Alvarez and Vega, 2009).…”