The research team, led by Petra Andersson of the University of Gothenburg alongside colleagues from Malmö University, Karlstad University, and the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, analyzed policy documents from national equestrian organizations and conducted semi-structured interviews with representatives from ten riding schools across Sweden. Drawing on Arran Stibbe’s concept of

…Arran Stibbe’s concept of “stories we live by,” the researchers asked a deceptively simple question: when riding school staff, board members, and national federation officials describe their environmental work, what underlying narratives are they actually living by? The answer, it turns out, reveals a striking gap between the language of policy and the language of practice.

At the national level, the Swedish Equestrian Federation’s policy documents speak fluently in the vocabulary of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Terms like “sustainable development,” “climate impact,” and “biodiversity” appear with the kind of institutional fluency one would expect from an organization operating within Sweden’s well-developed sustainability discourse. But when the researchers descended to the local level—examining documents produced by individual riding schools and interviewing the people who actually run them—that vocabulary largely disappeared. Local documents and interviewees rarely employed SDG-related terminology at all.

What makes this finding interesting is what the researchers found beneath that discursive distance. The absence of official sustainability language did not signal an absence of environmental engagement. On the contrary, the riding schools demonstrated strong commitment and considerable creativity in addressing the ecological challenges they encountered in their daily operations. Staff described practical measures for managing manure, protecting paddocks from overgrazing, and handling the waste streams that come with keeping large animals near urban areas. The problem was not motivation but framing: the schools were doing environmental work without recognizing it as such, because they lacked the conceptual vocabulary to name it.

This is where the ecolinguistic framework proved its analytical value. Stibbe’s approach treats language not as a neutral medium for describing reality but as a set of stories that shape what people consider possible, desirable, and normal. The five narratives the researchers identified—”the responsible local caretaker,” “we try, but we lack resources,” “learning through everyday practice,” “sustainability without sustainability terminology,” and “small action matters”—each encode a distinct way of understanding environmental responsibility. Together they paint a picture of organizations that care deeply about their local environments but feel structurally unequipped to engage with larger ecological questions.

The story of “the responsible local caretaker” positions the riding school as a steward of its immediate surroundings—caring for the land, the horses, and the neighborhood. “We try, but we lack resources” captures the frustration of schools whose ambitions outrun their budgets, staffing, and authority. “Learning through everyday practice” reflects the reality that environmental knowledge at these institutions is transmitted informally, through doing rather than teaching. “Sustainability without sustainability terminology” names the disconnect between action and vocabulary directly. And “small action matters” expresses a belief in the cumulative value of modest, local efforts—a narrative that can either empower or, the researchers suggest, serve as a ceiling that prevents engagement with systemic issues.

The researchers interpret these narratives as emerging eco-beneficial stories with genuine pedagogical potential. Riding schools are, after all, pedagogical environments: thousands of children and young people pass through them, many at formative ages, and they learn not only how to ride but how to relate to animals, land, and nature. If the stories a school lives by are ones of care, responsibility, and incremental action, those stories are being absorbed by young riders whether or not anyone articulates them explicitly. The marginal position of systematic environmental instruction in these settings means, however, that this potential remains largely untapped.

The constraints the study identifies are structural rather than attitudinal. Riding schools operate with limited knowledge about complex ecological issues, limited financial resources, and limited authority to address problems that extend beyond their property lines. Nutrient leakage from paddocks, for instance, is not something an individual school can solve alone; it requires coordination with landowners, municipalities, and agricultural actors. The 2020 Swedish government report on eutrophication that sparked debate within the sector highlighted precisely these kinds of diffuse, systemic problems—problems that local caretakers cannot simply will away through good intentions.

The authors’ argument follows logically from their findings: with strengthened organizational support from the federation level, clearer conceptual tools that connect everyday practice to established sustainability frameworks, and structured opportunities for capacity building, riding schools could translate their existing engagement into more systematic and consequential action. The gap between national policy language and local practice is not a failure of commitment but a translation problem—one that could be addressed by helping schools see their existing practices as part of a larger sustainability narrative.

The study also situates itself within a broader research landscape that has paid surprisingly little attention to sustainability in leisure activities. Reviews indicate that research on environmental sustainability within the leisure sector remains thin, and studies of sports and outdoor recreation suggest that participants’ motivations—rooted in performance, training, and enjoyment—often crowd out environmental concerns. Outdoor activities show somewhat stronger associations with nature preservation values, but they too carry environmental costs, particularly through car-dependent transportation to activity sites. The equine sector, with its intimate but complicated relationship to land, animals, and urban proximity, offers a particularly rich case for understanding how leisure organizations navigate these tensions.

What the Swedish riding schools ultimately demonstrate is that environmental engagement and environmental vocabulary are not the same thing—and that the absence of the latter should not be mistaken for the absence of the former. The stories these schools live by are already oriented toward care and responsibility. The challenge, as the researchers see it, is to give those stories the conceptual scaffolding, organizational backing, and educational structure they need to become stories that can genuinely shape a more sustainable future for the sector.

Subject of Research: Ecolinguistic analysis of sustainability narratives in Swedish riding schools

Article Title: Sustainability stories in Swedish riding schools: an ecolinguistic analysis of policy documents and interviews

Article References: Sustainability stories in Swedish riding schools: an ecolinguistic analysis of policy documents and interviews. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2026.1821456

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fspor.2026.1821456

Keywords: ecolinguistics, riding schools, sustainability, equine sector, Sweden, SDGs, environmental education, policy documents, narratives, manure management, Agenda 2030, equestrian sports