Understanding the nexus of sustainable development and sport: the systems thinking perspective

This study aims to explore how international sport experts make sense of sport’s interaction with sustainable development. We adopted the interpretivist lens, combining the viewpoints of identified experts with the systems thinking approach. We conducted 29 semi-structured interviews with higher management decision-makers in international sport organizations and used an inductive approach for theory building to analyze the data and the systems map to show the various interrelations of the categories that were identified. The systems map offers a visualization of perceived causal connections that stem directly from the interviews with the experts. The map contains 58 variables, including nine themes and 49 categories, which are connected via 112 causal links, indicating the interconnected structure. The themes “environment,” “social inclusion,” “economic growth,” and “health and wellbeing” represent outcomes of sport, while “visibility,” “safety,” “communication means,” “educational tools,” and “governance and integrity” are mechanisms of how sport can interact with sustainable development. The systems map presents a tool for understanding the complexity of relationships between key variables at play that can help policymakers, practitioners, and researchers when formulating, testing, and implementing various policy options directed toward increasing sustainability of sport stakeholders.