A Framework for the Adoption of the Internet in Local Sporting Bodies

Abstract

Sport plays a major part in the Australian psyche with millions of people participating every year. However organised sport at the local or social level in Australia relies on volunteers to support the needs of associations and their participating clubs. There is evidence that Internet applications are being adopted within associations and clubs for administration purposes (such as committee members using email to communicate with each other, or use of the Internet to record match results and calculate player performance statistics online). However, how are these being adopted, what are they being used for and what is the effect of the adoption on the associations and their volunteers? Using the Rogers’ (2005) innovation-decision process as a basis, this chapter describes the development of a framework that traces the adoption of an Internet application from initial knowledge of the application, through the decision to adopt and eventual confirmation of the usefulness of the application by continuance or discontinuance of its use. As local sporting clubs and associations are part of a larger group known as community based organisations and are predominantly run by volunteers, literature related to Internet application use by these groups is used to inform the framework. Lastly, an actual example of the adoption of an online statistics program in a local sporting association is mapped onto the framework, to show it may be applied in a practical situation.