The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which stakeholders of school-based elite sport teams (e.g., student-athletes, coaches, head coaches) perceive fairness of financial resource allocations based pm various principles of distributive justice. Specifically, this study attempted to investigate the perception of fairness for budget allocation among various principles of distributive justice according to diverse demographic factors such as gender, job position, and types of sports. To achieve this purpose, data were collected from various stakeholders of school-based elite sport teams at Gyeongnam province. Using convenience sampling method, 400 questionnaires were distributed. Of the 400 distributed questionnaires, a total of 366 questionnaires were employed for data analysis after excluding 34 incomplete questionnaires.
For instruments, a total of 10 items were adopted from the review of literature on organizational justice in a sport context to measure 10 different principles of distributive justice: equality of treatment, equality of results, equality of opportunity, production/athletic performance, efforts, popularity, ability, need due to lack of resources, need due to high operating costs, and need to be competitively successful. All items for distributive justice were measured on a 7 point Likert-type scale (Strongly Unfair: 1 ? Strongly Fair: 7). Statistical techniques for data analysis were frequent analysis, descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, confirmatory factory analysis (CFA), and Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0. Through these analyses, the following results were derived.
First, male participants significantly perceived more fairness in equality of treatment and equality of results than female participants at the situation of budget increment. For the situation of budget decrease, male participants significantly perceived more fairness in athletic performance, popularity, efforts, and ability than female participants.
Second, coaches significantly perceived more fairness in seven distributive principles (equality of treatment, equality of results, equality of opportunity, athletic performance, efforts, need due to lack of result, need due to high operating costs) than student-athletes at the situation of budget increment. For the budget decrease, student-athletes significantly perceived more fairness in equality of treatment than coaches.
Third, those in individual sports significantly perceived more fairness in five principles (equality of treatment, equality of results, equality of opportunity, athletic performance, need due to high operating costs) than those in team sports at the situation of budget increment. For the budget decrease, those in individual sports significantly perceived more fairness in equality of treatment that those in team sports.
Fourth, in the situation of budget increment, equality of treatment was perceived the most fair principle among 10 distributive principles, followed by efforts, ability, and athletic performance. Similarly, in the situation of budget decrease, equality of treatment was perceived the most fair principle among 10 distributive principles, followed by ability and athletic performance.
Fifth, the most likely used principles at practical budget allocations were contribution-based principles such as ability and athletic performance at both budget increase and decrease situations.
The results of this study would provide various meaningful and practical implications for sport managers and administrators who are directly involved in budget allocations. Specifically, the findings of this study would provide reasonable criteria when sport managers allocate budget among school-based elite sport teams. In addition, this study would contribute to the literature on distributive justice in a sport context by firstly examining the perception of fairness on budget allocation at Korean sport context.