A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Ethical Dimensions of Alcohol and Tobacco Sports Sponsorships
While the sport industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar international business with unique ethical concerns, there is little empirical research examining the ethics involved in sport sponsorships, especially sponsorship of alcohol and tobacco brands. This study investigates the potential influence of culture and gender on future practitioners' willingness to work in the tobacco and alcohol sport sponsorship areas. The nature of the relationship between sports, alcohol and tobacco is reviewed, along with past research on variables noted to influence ethical decision making. Three hypotheses are investigated for differences between American and Australian students. A cultural difference in ethical perceptions is supported, while gender differences are not significant. The implications of these findings are discussed, along with the study's limitations and future directions for ethics research in sport marketing.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Australian Research ::: Council for financial support and Swinburne University ::: of Technology for Strategic Initiative funding. One of ::: the authors X.W. acknowledges partial financial support of ::: the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation ::: 10364004 and the Yunnan Natural Science Foundation ::: 2003E0013M.