Social Return on Investment in Physical Activity and Sport: Is the Emperor Wearing Any Clothes?

Limitations have been noted for the employ of social return on investment (SROI) in physical activity and sport (PAS). A group of researchers recently produced a series of papers describing their efforts to standardize the application of SROI to PAS. Two of these papers, a systematic review and a subsequent commentary summarizing lessons learned from a Delphi study of experts, were published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health. In this commentary, I reflect on the findings of the systematic review and respond to the lessons learned. In their lessons learned, Nieto et al conclude no causal evidence exists for relationships between PAS with crime, social capital, or the environment. Furthermore, limited evidence exists for causality between PAS and some indicators of educational attainment and subjective well-being. Given that a critical component of a properly conducted SROI is the development of a logic model describing the causal relationship between inputs, outputs, and outcomes, I argue that the lack of causal relationships for much of the key outcomes for PAS is problematic. I identify other limitations for the current body of SROIs for PAS including mostly unpublished commissioned works and a lack of regulatory mechanisms. I applaud efforts to establish consensus for good practice in the application of SROI approaches to PAS. However, an additional apparent lesson from the work of Nieto and colleagues is that most SROIs are making faulty and inflated claims about the impact of PAS on social outcomes (eg, crime).