Background
Forest Green Rovers, an English football club, was the first professional sport club to receive the Vegan Trademark. FIFA described Forest Green Rovers as the world’s greenest football club and the club has received the UN Global Climate Action Award for its holistic sustainability practices. Food consumption at sport venues can be an inhibitor to promoting sustainability and climate change, because most food is meat-based and rather unstainable, and because fans’ ecological footprint is up to eight times higher while attending a sport event compared to daily life, with a large proportion of waste as a result of food consumption.
Design and Findings
In the Marketing ZFP article, a document analysis (44 documents, 56,057 words in total) was conducted first to explore the development of sustainable organizational values and how the sport organization markets their values towards fans. The findings reveal that Forest Green Rovers was able to overcome concerns regarding their sustainability approach and was successful in implementing sustainability in the value system of both the organization and the stakeholders, thereby stimulating behavioral change. Second, a survey of Forest Green Rovers fans (n = 107) reveals that the adoption of a plant-based diet by fans is positively associated with team value internalization, which relates positively with fans’ intention to eat plant-based foods in the future. Thus, internalization of organizational values may play a crucial role for promoting future sustainable actions among individual customers. Sustainability values may play a crucial role to bring corporate missions to life.
Implications
Sport organizations can encourage plant-based food consumption among fans by promoting sustainable organizational values to fans. Thus, sport organizations and their athletes may be important role models, even though many sport events and venues are not environmentally sustainable. Before organizations engage in shaping sustainable values, they are recommended to identify and link stakeholder concerns. Values practices can tackle concerns and create a value discourse. This helps overcome barriers and infuse sustainable organizational values within the organization and among stakeholders. The results of this study are meaningful for organizations outside the sports industry, too. By adopting and implementing sustainable organizational values, organizations might leverage their marketing activities directed at own employees and relevant stakeholders outside the organization as well as make a positive contribution to sustainable development.
Contact
Chair of Sport and Health Management
Prof. Dr. Jörg Königstorfer
Secretary: Mirjam Merz
Uptown Munich Campus D
Georg-Brauchle-Ring 60/62
80992 Munich Germany
Phone: +49.89.289.24559
Fax: +49.89.289.24642
info.mgt@sg.tum.de