Evaluating ethical awareness of amateur athletes about disruptive sport technology: the case of Nike Vaporfly road running shoes

Abstract

Problem Statement: The development of Vaporfly technology (VFT), which was introduced by Nike in 2017, caused a disruption in long-distance running races. Using these shoes, an unexpected number of records in all standardized road distances have been broken. Scientific literature indicates that VFT improves performance, at least in highly trained athletes. This resulted in an extensive ethical discussion about the use of VFT in competitions and led to the development of a set of norms (which have been approved in 2020 by World Athletics) on the use of this technology. Purpose: This study analyses how ethical factors in multidimensional ethics scale (MES) developed by Shawver & Sennetti (2009) influence the acceptance of VFT shoes. The attitude is measured using the psychometrical scale proposed by Venkatesh & Davis (2000). Approach: Relations between variables have been fitted with a structural equation model, which has been adjusted with partial least squares. Thus, the influence of every explanatory variable on acceptance is measured with a so-called coefficient of the path (cp), whose value is within [-1, 1]. Its interpretation is analogous to that of a correlation coefficient. Results: We have determined that relativism (cp = 0.388, p < 0.01) and egoism (cp = 0.241, p < 0.01) are relevant ethical variables for explaining the acceptance of VFT. Likewise, moral equity (cp = 0.12, p = 0.262) and utilitarianism (cp = 0.098, p = 0.13) show a positive relation with attitude towards VFT. However, these relations are not significant at standard statistical levels. In addition, we have determined that contractualism shows a negative non-significant relation with intention to use.Conclusions: The influence of ethical factors on the intention to use a disruptive sport technology, such as the Nike Vaporfly running shoes, has been confirmed. Ethics explains almost 50% of the intention to use this technology.