Socially constructed environmental issues and sport: A content analysis of Ski Resort Environmental Communications

The United Nations (UN) purported that “whenever a person engages in sport there is an impact on the environment” (UN, 2010, n.p.). The purpose of this research was to examine the safeguarding of the natural environment, or environmental sustainability (ES), in sport by studying the level of environmentally responsible actions for ski resorts in the USA. Specifically, this manuscript focused on the USA ski industry and examined Ski Resorts Environmental Communications (SRECs) stated on each of 82 resort websites. The methods included rating these communications for their prominence, breadth and depth based on the environmental categories in the USA Sustainable Slopes Program (SSP) Charter. Based on both these SREC ratings and the grades assigned to each resort by the Ski Area Citizen's Coalition (SACC), the resorts were classified as inactive, exploitive, reactive, or proactive using an adaption of Hudson and Miller's (2005) model. The results provide an assessment of the level of environmentally responsible actions by the ski resorts. Several directions for future research have been brought forward from this study, including the need to examine motivations behind ski resort publications on environmental communications and the likelihood of skiers selecting resorts based on the environmental communications posted on websites. A concentration of research is needed to develop further understandings concerning the contemporary issue of ES in sport.