This study investigates the determinants of virtual cycling adoption by voluntary sports clubs, considering how determinants differ across and discriminate between adopter categories.
Using an integrated innovation model that bridges innovation diffusion theory and organisational innovativeness research, we surveyed Flemish (Belgium) sport clubs (n = 70). Clubs were clustered into adopter categories based on a composite innovativeness index (attitude, evaluation and adoption-intention). MANOVA and discriminant analysis assessed differences in determinants and their predictive power.
Not resources but human capabilities, such as perceptions about innovation attributes and managerial capacity, emerged as the strongest predictors of clubs' innovativeness, followed by human-related capacity (e.g., sufficient skilled volunteers). Compared to non-human-related and environmental capacity, these determinants significantly differ and discriminate between innovative, intermediate and lagging clubs.
Findings support integrated models, highlighting the need to study both innovation-specific and organisation-specific determinants. Results suggest that adoption can be people-driven rather than resource-driven, which should receive greater attention in future sport marketing and management research.
Insights inform advice on knowledge management for federations and targeted marketing strategies for virtual cycling providers by identifying which perceptions and organisational factors to emphasise in their approach.
This study introduces club-level adoption insights of virtual cycling using an integrated approach that simultaneously considers organisation-specific and innovation-specific determinants. It also extends sport management literature by applying adopter categorisation to voluntary clubs using a composite index to measure clubs' innovativeness.
