Willingness-to-Pay for Environmental Measures in Non-Profit Sport Clubs

Tim F Thormann,Pamela Wicker

doi:10.3390/su13052841

Abstract

To reduce global warming and climate change, the German government plans to implement a carbon tax, which will also affect sport organizations. This study investigates how much sport club members are willing to pay for environmental measures and how sport-specific, club-specific, environmental, and socio-demographic factors are associated with their willingness-to-pay. In 2019 and 2020, active adult sport club members in five team/racket sports were sampled using an online survey in Germany (n = 3036). The contingent valuation method was applied to estimate sport club members’ willingness-to-pay for environmental measures. Regression analyses were employed to investigate a set of factors that are associated with club members’ decision to pay at all and the amount of willingness-to-pay. The results show that 64.3% of respondents reported a positive willingness-to-pay. The average willingness-to-pay for environmental measures amounts to EUR 14.53 per year and to EUR 22.59 for those reporting a positive willingness-to-pay. The results of t-tests show that club members stating a positive WTP differ significantly from members who are not willing to pay anything in terms of sport-specific, club-specific, environmental, and socio-demographic factors. The logistic regression results indicate that the likelihood of reporting a positive willingness-to-pay increases with increasing environmental consciousness, educational level, weekly practice hours, identification and satisfaction with the club, and subjective well-being, while age has a U-shaped effect. The results of a Tobit model show that the amount of willingness-to-pay is positively determined by environmental consciousness, educational level, and satisfaction with the club. The findings suggest that the majority of club members are willing to pay higher membership fees for the implementation of environmental measures in sport clubs. Increasing members’ level of environmental consciousness through educational initiatives represents a way for sport policy and sport managers to help increase financial support for environmental measures among club members.

Highlights

Climate change threatens natural life on Earth and carbon emissions must be reduced to prevent irreversible damage to the natural environment [1]
One example is the German government, which has decided to introduce a carbon tax, meaning that every ton of carbon emissions is taxed, and organizations can buy out carbon emissions in the form of certificate trading [3]
The average WTP for environmental measures is lower than WTP of sport club members for other purposes in previous studies (e.g., [14,16,63]), but close to the amount what sport fans of professional teams are willing to pay for environmental sustainability initiatives [42]

Summary

Introduction

Climate change threatens natural life on Earth and carbon emissions must be reduced to prevent irreversible damage to the natural environment [1]. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stressed that measures need to be taken to reduce global warming and keep the increase in temperature below 1.5 ◦ C to avoid further irreversible damage to the natural environment [2]. As a result of these developments, governments around the world have taken action and come up with regulations to protect the natural environment. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) assigned the sport sector an important role to achieve climate goals of the Paris Climate Agreement [4]. The relationship between sport and the natural environment has Sustainability 2021, 13, 2841.

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Discussion

Conclusion