Built to move: The role of design in sports participation
Investments toward active areas could make communities more active
University of Georgia
The amount a town or city invests in sports-related infrastructure may impact how active the people who live there are, according to new University of Georgia research.
Well-designed, aesthetically pleasing urban environments, the study found, affect how likely residents will be to engage in sports.
Researchers from the UGA Mary Frances Early College of Education said this could signal ways communities can make direct improvements on how healthy its citizens are.
“If there’s a TV in front of you, you would probably feel encouraged to watch some programs. It’s as simple as that,” said Troy Zhao, lead and corresponding author of the study and a doctoral student in the department of sport management and policy. “In this framework, we see this same thing but with how stimulating, built environments positively affect sports participation behavior.”
Areas that promote activity can increase sports participation
The researchers surveyed hundreds of urban planners and public health experts, as well as citizens in areas where recent urban sports investments were made.
The study found that cities with formal, informal or adapted urban sports spaces caused people who lived in them more likely to participate in sports.
Those spaces could look like sports complexes with basketball, tennis or swimming pools; stadiums for team play; or even marked trails and waterways for walking or kayaking.
"Previously when we all thought about sport participation, we thought about only the existence of a space, but now we know that aesthetics really matter.”
—Troy Zhao, College of Education
The people who had these areas as an option where they lived also had a more positive attitude, which may contribute to a desire to be active.
“This stands out. The design is not only influencing attitudes but indirectly affecting sport participation intentions through these attitudes,” Zhao said.
Areas without green spaces or ones that weren’t pedestrian friendly overall may contribute to a more sedentary lifestyle in highly populated, dense cities like Atlanta.
Certain aspects of sports spaces can make or break interest
While areas like soccer fields and recreation centers are a good thing, there are certain necessary characteristics to lead to healthy outcomes.
Among all age groups, 18 to 55, 80% of respondents agreed on the following as necessary for spaces to have:
- Availability
- Accessibility
- Design
- Safety
- Affordability
“Previously when we all thought about sport participation, we thought about only the existence of a space, but now we know that aesthetics really matter — down to how the floor is maintained.”
Think of the Atlanta Beltline or UGA’s Ramsey Student Center, Zhao said. Effort mattered. Zhao even spoke to the designer of the beltline, who made it accessible for runners, walkers and bikers at multiple points throughout the city, all while making it an environmentally pleasing design.
The social benefits of spaces were also seen across a community, as they provided an avenue for future events and organized teams.
The research signals to any level of planner or policymaker to consider these areas as necessary for overall community health.
“This is a key takeaway from our research and from a policy implication perspective,” he said. “We want to provide this, so that the urban planners, administrators, can integrate these factors to create multifunctional and attractive spaces to foster community engagement and encourage more sport participation.”
This study was also co-authored by Sam Chen, a doctoral student in Sport Management; Lan Mu, a professor in the Department of Geography; assistant professor of Sport Management Clay Collins; James Zhang, a professor of Sport Management, and Beijing Sport University professor of sports economics Yufei Bai. It was also the winner of the North American Society for Sport Management 2025 Student Paper Competition, the most significant award to a doctoral student in the field of Sport Management academia in the region.
Journal
European Sport Management Quarterly
Article Title
Staying active in cities: dimensions of urban built environment and mass sport participation
Flexible schedules and other negotiated arrangements may affect teams’ success—for better or worse
Transparency, however, is key to team’s cohesiveness, say Stevens researchers
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, N.J., October 6, 2025 — Employees often work out special arrangements with their bosses that are tailored to their individual needs or circumstances. For example, in recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in requests for greater schedule flexibility. For those able to work remotely it could be a hybrid schedule or a fully remote one, while for others it could be flexible hours that allow them to arrive to work later or leave earlier to drop off or pick up their kids from daycare.
Flexibility isn’t the only thing employees negotiate. Some also negotiate career advancement options such as, for example, having the company pay for classes that will provide the employee with beneficial skills that may lead to a better job in the future. Others may ask to be assigned more interesting or challenging tasks to better use certain competencies. Researchers call these arrangements “idiosyncratic deals” or i-deals, because they aren’t included in the companies’ standard policies and are worked out between employees and their managers.
“An i-deal is a non-standardized, personalized work arrangement that is open for negotiation to employees, but is not available by default to all employees,” explains Assistant Professor Haoying (Howie) Xu who studies organizational behavior and human resource management at Stevens School of Business. “Sometimes it can be written on the job offer and sometimes it’s agreed upon with one’s manager.”
While these arrangements certainly confer advantages to the employees who ask for them, less is known about how they affect their teams’ overall performance and ultimately the level of customer service the teams provide. “This is an important question that needs to be addressed to enable team managers to make more informed decisions about the use of i-deals,” says Xu. Motivated by this, Xu and his collaborators, including Sandy Wayne from the University of Illinois Chicago, Eric Michel from Northern Illinois University, and Jingzhou Pan from Tianjin University, wanted to find out how each of the three i-deal types — flexibility, career and task — play out in the teams’ performance and customer service.
For their research, Xu and his team conducted a study of an American delicatessen chain and three companies in China, including two retailers and an HR consulting — to investigate varied cultural and business settings. The American deli chain offered flexible hours to the assistant managers and was open to negotiations for career and task options. The Chinese companies offered similar arrangements to their employees. Xu’s team conducted surveys of several hundred people in total and analyzed the results.
They found that flexibility i-deals to some employees heightened relationship conflicts within the teams. That’s because when employees compare their own work arrangements to the special arrangements some of their colleagues secured, they may feel that the latter negotiated a better deal. “Consciously or subconsciously, people tend to compare themselves to others, including their coworkers,” Xu says. If someone, for example, is allowed to leave early, their colleagues may perceive that as unfair. They may see themselves as having to pick up the slack.
The increased relationship conflicts led to diminished customer service, Xu’s research found. “It undermined team coherence by heightening the team conflict.” Xu says. “And in turn, the downstream consequence is that the customer service is also undermined. If you’re stressed or unhappy because of tensions within your team, that emotional dynamic can trickle down to the service you provide to your customers.”
However, not all types of i-deals have these undesirable effects. Xu’s research found that granting task i-deals to some employees have beneficial effects on the teams. Xu attributes that to the fact that people typically ask to be assigned to tasks they enjoy or are good at doing. Their colleagues may not be interested in those tasks or may view them as too difficult or tedious. The results are a better fitting differentiation of roles within teams, tailoring tasks, duties and responsibilities to each member’s talents and strengths.
Interestingly, and contrary to expectations, Xu’s research found no effects of negotiating and granting career i-deals on teams. However, Xu advises managers to remain cautious about potential fairness concerns, particularly in competitive team climates where employees are highly sensitive to comparisons of career advancement with their colleagues.
The team outlined their findings in the study titled I-deals for Some Employees May (Not) Be Ideal for the Team: Positive and Negative Relationships Between I-deals Differentiation and Team Effectiveness, published in Human Resource Management on September 25, 2025
Xu cautions that their findings should not be misinterpreted as though flexibility i-deals negotiation is bad for business. “We expect the undesirable effects of negotiating and granting flexibility i-deals to arise mainly in contexts where employees’ physical presence is critical for team coordination and performance, such as customer service settings like restaurants, as examined in our studies.” Xu explains.
He adds, “We don’t want to convey wrong information to institutions that flexibility i-deals shouldn't be negotiated. I see a lot of evidence supporting the companies’ benefits of flexibility i-deals in various settings, such as attracting and retaining star performers and uniquely skilled workforce. That is particularly true in academic settings, information technology, and other skilled professions when flexibility and autonomy are oftentimes inherent to the work and essential for driving creativity and innovation.”
Looking at how their research can be applied, Xu suggests that managers give employees room to negotiate the tasks they take on so that the employees can make the most of their unique strengths for the teams. Xu also offers ways to mediate the negative perspective of employees who feel that i-deals may be unfair. Managers should be transparent with team members as to why some are given greater flexibility or career opportunities, and how these non-standard arrangements may confer advantages to the organization’s overall productivity and success. “Managers can have candid discussions with their teams,” Xu says. “Transparency will go a long way and ultimately will benefit the organization as a whole.”
About Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens is a premier, private research university situated in Hoboken, New Jersey. Since our founding in 1870, technological innovation has been the hallmark of Stevens’ education and research. Within the university’s three schools and one college, more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate closely with faculty in an interdisciplinary, student-centric, entrepreneurial environment. Academic and research programs spanning business, computing, engineering, the arts and other disciplines actively advance the frontiers of science and leverage technology to confront our most pressing global challenges. The university continues to be consistently ranked among the nation’s leaders in career services, post-graduation salaries of alumni and return on tuition investment.
Journal
Human Resource Management
Article Title
I-Deals for Some Employees May (Not) Be Ideal for the Team: Positive and Negative Relationships Between I-Deals Differentiation and Team Effectiveness
