Promoting Sustainable Sporting Events for Sustainable Destinations: A Demand-Side Perspective

Tourism heavily depends on natural resources, yet it also reduces the quality and availability of these resources. By so doing, tourism puts at risk not only the livability of tourist destinations for the hosts but also its own existence. Research suggests that increasing environmentally sustainable tourist behavior (ESB) is the most promising approach to reducing negative environmental impacts of tourism. Important driver of tourists' ESB is their willingness and an opportunity to behave in environmentally sustainable way; thus, tourism providers must understand which behaviors tourists are willing to engage with and provide them the opportunity to do so. The present study investigates tourists' willingness to engage in two different pro-environmental actions aimed at reducing waste footprint at one of the largest international ski sport events. One action provides the tourists with the opportunity to actively participate in cleaning up the event area, the other one provides opportunity to offset negative impact by donating to the organizer's environmental fund. Results show that almost 70% of spectators are willing to actively participate in cleaning up the event area, but less than a third (28%) is willing to donate to the environmental fund. Using CHAID analysis a number of socio-demographic and psychological variables were used to identify the segments of spectators who are willing to engage in either of the two behaviors. Results show that 1) drivers of the two behaviors are different and 2) four or seven distinctive groups of spectators were identified for the two behaviors, respectively. Discussion advances the theory of environmentally sustainable tourist behavior and provides avenues for sustainable destination governance. The study concludes with recommendations for tourism policy makers and industry on how to induce environmentally sustainable spectators' behavior in local destinations.