Environmental Sustainability Initiatives in Professional Sports Clubs: The Relationship Between Consumer Perception and Conative Loyalty

In recent years, social demands and academic interest in the environmental and social contribution activities of professional sports clubs have increased. This is due to the spread of the idea that building good relationships with various stakeholders is essential for clubs to enhance their corporate value. However, it is not easy for professional sports clubs to continuously implement sustainable environmental initiatives (ESI) due to the financial burden. It is unclear to what extent consumers are aware of the ESI implemented by professional sports clubs and how much they are willing to spend afterwards, and there are no studies on ESI by professional sports clubs in Japan. Furthermore, it is significant and extremely important to clarify the results of ESI conducted by professional sports clubs on their teams from a marketing perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward professional sports clubs that conduct ESI. To achieve the objective, stakeholder theory and social identity theory are applied as a theoretical background to examine the impact of perceived ESI on intention to support a club and intention to attend a game. Data were obtained from a sample that included potential as well as existing consumers, and it was found that the perception of ESI influenced the intention to support a club and the intention to attend a game. The results of the multiple-group structural equation modeling revealed that the perception of ESI influenced the intention to support a club and the intention to attend a game, even among consumers who had no experience of attending a game. In the future, it will be necessary to elucidate the mechanism and causal relationship by which the perception of ESI enhances intentional loyalty, through what kind of psychological process.