Pro-environmental behavior in sport event tourism: roles of event attendees and destinations

Abstract

Sport event tourism destinations hope that their green event operations will encourage event attendees to adopt pro-environmental behaviors. Yet little research has examined whether event attendees have greater awareness of destination environmental responsibility and whether, if so, it improves their environmental behavior. This study aims to examine whether sport event attendees' pro-environmental behavior at home differs from their behavior at sport event tourism destination; and assess whether the difference of pro-environmental behavior between two settings is affected differently depending on sport event attendee' characteristics. Study participants are sport event attendees who were tailgaters in a university campus in the Midwest region of the USA. Onsite systematic sampling was conducted in 2013. After distributing follow-up surveys, a total of 514 surveys were collected. Results of the paired-sample t-tests indicated that study participants' self-reported recycling behavior scores decreased from home to the sport event setting. Furthermore, results of mixed between-within subjects ANOVAs revealed that the degree of decrease in sport event attendees' pro-environmental behavior from home to sport event tourism destination is different depending on event attendees' perception of destination environmental responsibility and event attendee sub-types (i.e., tourist vs. non-tourist). Theoretical discussions and managerial implications are presented.