How air quality affects sport participants’ well-being: Soccer in the Streets near MARTA stations
Project Description
Soccer in the Streets is a non-profit organization for the metro Atlanta area’s recreational and community soccer programs. The Soccer in the Streets’ one notable program is StationSoccer. In this program, participants play soccer on the mini-fields built inside or near MARTA stations. For families with resource barriers to both travel and safe places that can accommodate soccer games, the “world’s first transit soccer league” enables metro Atlanta kids and adults to participate in sport activities and adopt healthy lifestyles. In 2020, approximately 1,700 youths and 200 adults participated in this program.
Soccer in the Streets also endeavors to educate participants on Atlanta’s environmental and sustainability issues. They have built soccer mini-fields inside or near MARTA stations and changed the environments surrounding the stations. They are currently running four soccer villages—East Point, Five Points, Lindbergh, and West End—and have plans to build more. Doing so promotes using MARTA rides which supports reducing vehicle emissions and gasoline consumption. Given Soccer in the Streets’ unique and innovative campaigns, especially their installing of soccer fields on and around MARTA stations, it seems worth wondering how the venue’s proximity to trains and Atlanta’s urban setting affect the participants’ perceived benefits and positive experiences of sport participation. If there is any impact, we believe that the venue’s air quality plays a crucial role in leveraging the surrounding environment and the participants’ perceived benefits and experience.
Atlanta’s air pollution level is, by and large, more than acceptable. In early 2019, for example, prior to COVID-19 lessening vehicle traffic and industry operation, Atlanta’s annual air quality index was a “good” level. Nonetheless, an emerging challenge for Soccer in the Streets—and urban populations more generally—is air pollution, especially particulate matter. Soccer players might be exposed to local air pollutants produced by passing trains and heavy traffic in the metro Atlanta area. We believe that this environmental factor could affect Soccer in the Streets in terms of its capacity to provide their programs to community stakeholders not to mention the participants’ health, especially their well-being. In fact, poor air quality’s detrimental effect on people’s sport activities and endangered well-being has become an issue sufficient to develop international collaboration in the United Nations, World Health Organization, and the International Olympic Committee.
The project assesses air quality and understands its impact on participants. For the task, we propose two research questions, “Is there a significant effect of PM levels on the sport participants’ experiences and well-being?” and “If so, to what degree do PM levels in the venues affect the participants’ experiences and well-being?” The project’s expected impact is assessible in two aspects. First, the proposed research will reveal the dynamics of how sport participants’ well-being is affected by ambient air quality. The results should facilitate urban policymakers, developers, and public health practitioners to consider sport facilities and programs in their policy implementations. Second, the project will educate program participants to assess the value of a suitable environment for their community and the importance of community programs that help improve the quality of an environment. This assessment would lead them to realize and advocate for environmental justice and community health.
Project Department
Exercise Science and Sport Management
Research Requirements
On-site survey and air measures will be made out of the campus.
Project Duration
Fall 2022-Summer 2023
Contact
Dr. Kyu-Soo Chung (kchung2@kennesaw.edu)
