A tool for the control of environmental management in golf courses

Purpose - Given the significant proliferation of golf courses in recent years, with around 6,500 in Europe alone, and the impact of their exploitation on the environment, it would be interesting for those responsible for golf courses to have an easy-to-use tool that contributes to the control of environmental management and the environmental impact of those courses. The objective of the work is to provide an easy-to-use tool that permits an evaluation of the environmental behaviour of golf courses. Design/methodology/approach - The research methodology applied in this work was the review of secondary sources of data and, more importantly, in-depth interviews with experts. Findings - The proposed model comprises two dimensions - operational behaviour and environmental management - with different categories established for each. Each category comprises a series of indicators that facilitate the measurement of the categories. The model permits comparisons at an overall level, for each dimension or category and even for each indicator. Practical implications - The principal implications concern golf course managers and greenkeepers, who will have a tool that contributes to the integrated and simple control of the most important environmental variables. Originality/value - The main contribution lies in establishing a tool which, in the fashion of the Balanced Scorecard, includes the principal environmental impacts of golf courses in a coherent and integrated manner. Moreover, by means of a simple indexing system, the tool enables measures to be established that synthesise impacts of a similar character in a single value, which will make more effective control possible.