Distance decay and public transportation usage among select professional Seattle sport fans.

Sport organizations are engaging in more advanced environmental sustainability efforts to reduce their environmental impacts. In particular, sport organizations and venues can align their environmental goals with the surrounding city's environmental objectives. In this study, we examine the relationship between the city and the various sport venues given the city's agenda to reduce pollution by encouraging the use of public transport. Through ticket purchase data and GIS analysis, we examine how the city capacity helps sport venues fulfill their environmental goals to reduce the environmental impact from fan transportation. We identified the geographical fragmentation of sport fans and found that most fans live beyond five miles of a light rail station. This distance decay from the station makes fans reliant on another form of transportation. Researchers and practitioners can use this approach to leverage internal data and GIS analyses to understand the influence of geographical segmentation of their fans and the influence of this distribution on the environmental impact of fans. This analysis also provides the foundation for future researchers to further examine transportation behaviors of sport fans and the effect of distance decay from transportation stations on sustainable transportation choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]