Research articles

Do you have to drive to get to the stables? The horse industry’s need for transportation

June 9, 2025

🇸🇪 Summary in Swedish

Susanna Hedenborg¹, Gabriella Torell Palmquist², Anna Sätre¹,
Petra Andersson³ & Aage Radmann^1,4¹ Malmö University; ² Karlstad University; ³ University of Gothenburg;
⁴ Norwegian School of Sport Sciences

In Sweden and Norway, the horse industry offers many leisure activities and work. But the horse industry also affects the environment through, for example, its dependence on transport, consumption of feed, production of manure and waste, as well as need for energy. This article explores and analyzes how actors in the horse industry relate to the transport dependency. The analysis is based on 697 survey responses and 22 in-depth interviews with people in the horse industry as well as seven observations of riding schools in Sweden and Norway. The results are presented as five stories about how people with different roles in the horse industry relate to the need for transport and are analyzed using the so-called COM-B model. In summary, we state that the industry’s knowledge needs are different for different groups. Furthermore, we see that the opportunities to change the industry are partly dependent on the actions of other actors. For example, municipalities and regions need to review how children and adults can get to riding schools in other ways than by car. Finally, our study shows that motivation varies, but that those who participated in this study desire a change.

Get the horse and environment article in Swedish

SUSANNA HEDENBORG is a professor in Sport Science, Malmö University. Hedenborg has an academic background in social and economic history. In her sport research she has focused on childhood and youth studies, gender, and equestrian sports. She is the author of numerous articles and text books in sport science. Hedenborg is affiliated to the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and president of the Swedish Research Council for Sport Science.

GABRIELLA THORELL PALMQUIST holds a Ph.D. in Sport Science and has worked for 20 years as the head teacher in pedagogy at the Swedish National Equestrian Center at Strömsholm. She is now also a teacher in Sport Science at Karlstad University. Gabriella works periodically for the Swedish Equestrian Federation and has developed educational materials for youth leaders, riding teachers, and coaches. Her primary research interests are sport science perspectives on equestrian sports, both nationally and internationally.

ANNA SÄTRE is a research assistant in sports science at Malmö University and the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences. Anna has a master’s degree in gender studies from Lund University and she has worked in several different sports science research projects from the perspective of social science. She recently published an article about football supporters, which focuses on female supporters’ organization in the stands.

PETRA ANDERSSON is a researcher at Gothenburg University. She conducts interdisciplinary research that has moved across areas of both environmental philosophy and animal ethics. She is part of a research project called Horse Cultures in Transformation, where she continues her research on horse welfare and its conditions. She has also written about the image of horse girls in the media, as well as how elite riders are portrayed in the sports pages of daily newspapers with regard to gender.

AAGE RADMANN is a professor of sport sociology at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and deals with understanding and explaining how sociological perspectives influence the development of sports and society. The themes that are the focus of his research are youth culture/identity, football and supporter culture, violence and hooliganism, gender/masculinity, (social) media, digitization, equestrian sports, leadership, outdoor life, sport tourism, sport for development, and e-sports.