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A longitudinal study of sustainability attitudes, intentions, and behaviors

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Abstract

Event managers are attempting to reduce their environmental impact but have difficulty in managing stakeholders’ behaviors. Yet, event managers have no guidelines to properly engage stakeholders to improve attitudes towards sustainability or evaluate the effectiveness of current communication strategies to convey the parent organization’s prioritization of sustainability initiatives. This research extends and evaluates the fit for the entire Sport Sustainability Campaign Evaluation Model (SSCEM) longitudinally using a sport event’s (the Games’) comprehensive environmental sustainability initiative across multiple campaigns (waste diversion, transportation, energy conservation, and water conservation). Data was gathered (both pre- and post-Games) from caregivers (N = 182) of intellectually disabled athletes who attended the Games. The structural model fit adequately well (RMSEA = 0.072; χ2/df = 1.64). Our results demonstrate the necessary elements to successfully design such messaging campaigns to engage and promote sustainable behaviors at events and how such campaigns can influence sustainability and advocacy behaviors beyond the event in local communities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marketing Department, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Galen T. Trail

  2. Department of Health and Kinesiology, Sport Ecology Laboratory, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

    Brian P. McCullough

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  1. Galen T. Trail
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  2. Brian P. McCullough
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Correspondence to Brian P. McCullough.

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Handled by Annamaria Di Fabio, Universita degli Studi di Firenze Dipartimento di Scienze della Formazione e Psicologia (sezione di Psicologia), Italy.

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Trail, G.T., McCullough, B.P. A longitudinal study of sustainability attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Sustain Sci 16, 1503–1518 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00954-7

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