Sport Teams’ Environmental Campaign and Spectators’ Behavioral Change: A Latent Change Score Modeling Approach

There is a contention that sport organizations provide significant potential as platforms for fostering environmentally conscious behavior among their consumers. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how credibility connects to the change and persistence of sport consumers’ pro-environmental behavior. A notable aspect of this study is to clearly explain how perceived credibility correlates with desired outcomes over different timescales in social marketing. Data were collected at two measurement points conducting a panel research design (N = 203). The results indicate that perceived credibility of sport organization is positively associated with perceived influence of campaign and the variations of two specific behaviors. Additionally, the perceived influence of campaign was found to have a mediating effect on both environmental credibility and the two dependent variables. This study contributes showing that a sport organization’s credibility on environmental issues significantly impacts how spectators perceive the influence of campaigns.