A socioecological framework for leveraging sport events for youth sport

Proponents of sport events maintain that sport events foster sport participation among host community members, particularly among youth. However, the evidence to support these claims is lacking. The use of theory provides a guided approach to investigating and understanding a phenomenon. Often used to design, implement, and evaluate interventions for youth sport participation, Social Ecology Theory provides a strong theoretical foundation for understanding how sport events can be used in interventions to foster sport participation among youth (i.e., event leveraging). Thus, this article proposes a socioecological framework for leveraging sport events for youth sport participation. The proposed socioecological framework explains how the different socioecological levels (i.e., intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, community, political) and systems (i.e., micro, meso, exo, macro, chrono) interact to better understand how to design, implement, and evaluate leveraging initiatives for youth sport participation from sport events.