Explicit and implicit attitudes toward sustainability in outdoor athletes

Area of Science:

• Environmental Psychology
• Sports Science
• Sustainability Studies

Background:

• Sports significantly influence environmental awareness and behavior.
• Little is known about differences in athletes' sustainability attitudes, particularly implicit dimensions.
• Individual vs. team sports may foster distinct environmental perspectives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate differences in explicit and implicit sustainable attitudes between individual and team outdoor athletes.
• To explore the relationship between sport type and environmental perceptions.
• To understand the nuances of athletes' attitudes toward sustainability.

Main Methods:

• Surveyed 100 outdoor athletes (45 individual, 55 team).
• Utilized an explicit rating task and the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
• Administered the Connectedness to Nature Scale and demographic questionnaire.

Main Results:

• Individual athletes explicitly rated non-sustainable concepts less positively than team athletes.
• No significant differences were found in implicit attitudes or explicit attitudes toward sustainable concepts.
• Findings suggest explicit evaluations of unsustainability, not sustainability itself, differ between groups.

Conclusions:

• Individual and team outdoor athletes exhibit differences in explicit attitudes towards unsustainable concepts.
• Implicit attitudes regarding sustainability appear consistent across both athlete types.
• Further research is needed to explore the underlying psychological processes influencing these attitude differences.