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Aim and Research Questions
Sport has a unique position to drive social change (McCullough et al., 2016) and modern day hyper-commercialization and sport marketing allows for multifaceted global engagement with fans and stakeholders, including on issues like climate change. Yet, discrepancies between environmental efforts and communication in the sport industry has raised concerns of greenwashing among scholars, NGOs, media, and other stakeholders (Falkenheim & Prewitt, 2022; Wilby et al., 2023).
Despite this, little research has explored how greenwashing is conceptualized in the sport industry, while general management literature has addressed greenwashing for decades. Hence, this study draws both on sport-related greenwashing literature, and on the broader management literature on greenwashing, and pairs this with research on environmental sustainability (ES), and environmental communication in sport, to fulfill two main research aims: 1) propose how greenwashing manifests, and should be perceived, through the sport management lens, and 2) direct the future research agenda on greenwashing in sport. Resultingly, the following research question guides the study: How is greenwashing conceptualized in the general management literature and addressed in the sport industry context?
Theoretical Background
Greenwashing is the act of misleading consumers through deceptive marketing that makes an organization, product, or service appear more environmentally sustainable than it truly is. In sport, organizations have increasingly responded to pressures to adopt more sustainable business practices, prompting an increase in marketing and communication of ES. This has caused concern for the authenticity of such signaling efforts, with questions towards the genuine action underpinning environmental marketing (McCullough et al., 2020) and greenwashing accusations in sport.
Research Design, Methodology, and Data Analysis
For this study, a scoping review method (Dowling et al., 2020) is applied. The method is particularly useful for outlining knowledge in fields that are still relatively unexplored, as it can include “a range of study designs in both published and grey literature”, to best make future research recommendations (Dowling et al., 2020, p. 771). Inclusion criteria are studies examining greenwashing, corporate social responsibility, including environmental sustainability, environmental sustainability and sport, green sport marketing, environmental sustainability communication and sport, environmental sustainability signaling and sport, as well as sport and greenwashing. Literature from 1989 to present were included, as 1989 marks the influx of ES in management literature (Vollero, 2022), totaling 54 studies. Data analysis followed the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methodology (Peters et al., 2020), thematically analyzed and structured to present results.
Findings and Discussion
Despite acknowledging the importance of environmental initiatives, few studies explore the extent and impact of greenwashing in the sector. Little attention has further been dedicated to the perceived disconnect between environmental communication and action (McCullough et al., 2016; Wall-Tweedie & Nguyen, 2016). However, a number of discussions on greenwashing and sport exist as anecdotal evidence, in the grey literature, and in the media.
In the broader management literature, major research areas include greenwashing categorizations, highlighting selective disclosure, attention deflection, and deceptive manipulation. Other topics concern greenwashing motivations, avoidance strategies, and how organizations appear environmentally focused without genuine action, underpinned by institutional, legitimization, attribution, and signaling theory, to mention a few (Vollero, 2022). Other studies address consumer perceptions and purchase intentions tied to environmental marketing and perceived greenwashing, finding that consumers are sceptic towards green claims and often able to detect deceptive marketing tactics (Liu et al., 2023). Given these findings within and outside of sport, the need for additional research to clarify the phenomenon of greenwashing in the sport industry and in sport management is stressed. The discussion further highlights challenges of aligning environmental action with communication strategies and underscores the continued need for transparency and accountability in environmental reporting in sport, including guidelines and regulations.
Conclusion, Contributions and Implications
This scoping review contributes to sport management literature by exploring the current status and understanding of greenwashing in sport. Major questions that emerge for the analysis presently are: what types of greenwashing are most prevalent in sport and why, who drives greenwashing action, how should distinctions be made between intentional and unintentional greenwashing, how can organizations communicate more transparently about environmental initiatives, and finally, how will greenwashing practices change as the sport industry advances environmental action, while regulations on green marketing are fortified. As data collection is ongoing, these and other gaps will be further structured and presented as a coherent research agenda at the EASM conference.
