blog: Bowling Emissions Out | Edgbaston TripSwitch
Thursday 25th January 2024
Earlier this year, ITP was appointed by Edgbaston Stadium to provide an evidence-based strategy to outline spectator travel patterns for the flagship “Go Green Game”. As the first ever sustainable international cricket match held at Edgbaston, there was a desire to build momentum on the fantastic work the stadium and the sustainability team have already achieved over recent years.
To help them achieve this and to better understand the current impact of spectator travel on their overall carbon footprint, Edgbaston Stadium procured ITP’s innovative travel planning service - “TripSwitch”. The TripSwitch service provides a solution for organisations looking to influence more sustainable trips and reach their wider net zero goals. Edgbaston Stadium chose to focus on two elements of the TripSwitch service for this piece of work, the Carbon Calculator and the Audience Assessment tools.
As a service, TripSwitch is particularly valuable for sports venues as it can be used to assess staff travel, spectator travel, business and freight travel.
For Edgbaston though, we focused on spectators. As the Go Green Game was an England Men’s IT20 fixture against New Zealand, this resulted in a range of spectators travelling from across the UK and further afield.
TripSwitch Carbon Calculator
The TripSwitch Carbon Calculator tool quantifies an organisation's transport-related carbon footprint to create a baseline for comparison of future transport use. For Edgbaston Stadium, the total spectator distances travelled by each transport method were used to calculate the total emissions produced. Various outputs could be obtained from this data, including a breakdown of direct and indirect emissions and a combination of both, which was the key output focused on for this piece of work.
This data was acquired via our bespoke TripSwitch survey which fed into both the Carbon Calculator and the Audience Assessment tools. The survey received a high response rate, providing confidence that our results are an accurate reflection of the total attendance of 19,536 spectators.
A total of 228 Tonnes of CO2e were emitted through spectator travel at the Go Green Game with a total carbon footprint calculated annually for men’s international matches held at Edgbaston in 2023 (the IT20 fixture and the Ashes) of 1,407 tonnes of CO2e. This is the value Edgbaston will be working with to reduce the emissions created by spectator travel for future international fixtures.
TripSwitch Audience Assessment
By using data obtained from the initial TripSwitch survey, the respondents could be categorised into one of six TripSwitch segments highlighted below using the Audience Assessment tool:
This refining process considers the spectators' attitudes towards the use of different transport methods and their current travel behaviours in order to categorise them. This information is then used to determine whether a respondent can be classified as a convertible, maintainable or unconvertible for the purposes of prompting a travel behaviour change, providing us with a better understanding of spectator travel choices and the ability to develop a strategy for targeting effective interventions aimed at influencing future travel choices.
Through this analysis of spectator perceptions and willingness to use alternative transport options for the Go Green Game, 63% of survey respondents were categorised as convertibles, reflecting a high proportion of individuals who are amenable to changing their behaviour to more sustainable methods of transport. The assessment also outlined that 39% of spectators were classified as Disgruntled Drivers, representing a proportion of current car users who find it increasingly stressful and expensive to travel this way to international cricket matches at Edgbaston.
To provide an insight into where these spectators were located, we undertook an initial mapping exercise which showed where Disgruntled Drivers were located geographically alongside public transport options they may be able to utilise within the West Midlands area. This provided Edgbaston Stadium with a greater sense of feasible transport methods for these spectators in the future, within the West Midlands and their sphere of influence working alongside key partners such as Transport for West Midlands (TfWM).
The TripSwitch service formed part of a wide range of initiatives put in place for the flagship Go Green Game and ITP was delighted to see that Edgbaston Stadium picked up two wins at the 2023 BASIS Awards for Partnership of the Year and Team of the Year.
This was an exciting project to work on and we’re keen to see what Edgbaston Stadium does next as it continues to lead the way in sustainability in sport.
If you would like to find out more about TripSwitch and how it can support you as a sports team, organisation or venue, please get in touch with Kirsty Guttridge.