Reimagining Exercise and Sports Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Physical Activity & Exercise (PAE) are widely regarded as one of the most cost effective ways to improve health. PAE can be achieved in a wide variety of ways, including structured exercise training programs, lifetime activities like running and cycling, and even transportation. While transportation (e.g., commuting) and general outdoor access (e.g., neighborhood walkability and green space/parks) can be the most prevalent and easiest ways to implement increased PAE in communities, real and perceived access to outdoor spaces and safe commuting options influence participation. Therefore, investment in infrastructure, like bike lanes and multi-use trails, is essential to increasing outdoor activity.

Sports participation is often seen as an important point of access to participation in PAE and occurs both in the education setting, as well as part of numerous activities promoted by private entities (e.g., sports leagues, running and cycling events businesses). For example, there were nearly 2500 triathlon events held in 2019 in the USA alone, with approximately 2 million individual participations (USA Triathlon Demographics). However, the financial solvency of those businesses, or their economic and environmental impact, remains unclear.

Finally, the study of PAE is often limited to tightly controlled lab facilities. However, recent advances of social media and fitness platforms provide a huge potential to collect wide-ranging PAE data. Nonetheless, implementation of those platforms in research has been torpid.

This Special Issue aims to explore the sustainability of exercise and sport across a range of areas from participation of PAE for health and fitness, to the use of PAE for transportation and competition. In addition, the current COVID-19 pandemic has heightened concerns not only about the environmental and economic impacts of sports events across domains, but also their impact on physical and mental health. Finally, the current pandemic has also limited the ability of researchers to study PAE in a controlled lab setting, spurring innovation in the use of field-based platforms and resources to conduct research. We aim to highlight how exercise and sport integrate into the broader concepts of environmental, economic, health, and even academic sustainability. We invite you to contribute to this area by submitting systematic and in-depth reviews of the literature, case studies, or original research, as well as novel uses of scientific methods and innovative statistical analyses related to the listed aims.

Dr. Christopher R. Harnish
Dr. Garrett S. Bullock
Dr. Donna L. Wolf
Dr. Brian Miller
Guest Editors

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• physical activity
• exercise is medicine
• smart growth
• commuting
• event promotion
• vision zero
• perception of safety
• comfort and convenience
• demand estimation
• social media