Voluntary sports clubs, virtual communities and social sustainability: evidence from the Netherlands

Voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) are organizations that strive to develop social sustainability through sport. Social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook and Twitter, are increasingly used within VSCs, which results in the creation of virtual (online) communities that can better assist in the creation of social sustainability, and through the appreciation of stakeholders’ needs, improve the organizations’ integrity management. Yet to this day, there is little insight into how these function within the clubs. In this study, through the examination of the perceptions of young adult members of VSCs in the Netherlands, we introduce a typology of four profiles of VSC’s virtual communities that portray how participants perceive the use of SNS in their clubs and how virtual communities can contribute to membership involvement.